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Trade Union Organizing in the Informal Economy:

A Review of the Literature on Organizing

in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America

and Western, Central and Eastern Europe

Report to the Solidarity Center

Principal Investigators: Susan J. Schurman and Adrienne E. Eaton

Contributing Authors: Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, Richard Hyman, Camille

DiLeo, Gilma Madrid Berroterán, Sahra Ryklief, Mihai Varga, Verna Viajar

Rutgers University

January 2012

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Acknowledgments: The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Leah Vosko for helping to

orient us in the Canadian literature, Faiza Abbas for her research assistance, Czar Joseph Castillo for help

with data on the informal sector in Asia, Fidelia Pokuah for assistance with document preparation, and the

staff of the Solidarity Center for providing access to the informal economy practitioner community

around the world. Any errors in the report, however, are our entirely own.

This publication was made possible through support provided by the Office of Democracy and

Governance, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, U.S. Agency for

International Development, under the terms of Leader with Associates Cooperative Agreement No. AID-

OAA-L-11-00001. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect

the views of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

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Contributors

Gilma Madrid Berroterán, PhD, University of Warwick, is an independent researcher on the social, economic and

cultural aspects of trade and globalizations and their impact on Human Rights in Latin America. She has published

articles on gender, ethical trade, economy and culture

Camille DiLeo is a student in the Masters in Labor and Employment Relations Program at Rutgers.

Adrienne E. Eaton is chair of the Labor Studies and Employment Relations department at Rutgers University. Her

research focuses on labor-management partnerships, union organizing under neutrality and card check and the

impact of unionization on particular occupational groups including managerial workers and graduate student

employees. She’s the co-author along with Tom Kochan, Paul Adler and Robert McKersie of the book, Healing

Together: The Kaiser Permanente Labor-Management Partnership, editor with Jeff Keefe of Employment Dispute

Resolution in the Changing Workplace, and author of numerous articles published in journals like Industrial and

Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, Labor Studies Journal, and Advances in Industrial and Labor

Relations.

Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick is a Lecturer in Management at Birkbeck, University of London. She was awarded

a doctorate in sociology at the University of Warwick in 2001 and specializes in international and comparative

industrial relations, international trade unionism and equal opportunities. She is a former Information Officer of the

International Union of Food and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) and Coordinating Editor of the Social and

Labour Bulletin of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), both in Geneva. She is currently vice-president of

Birkbeck University and College Union and is a staff governor of Birkbeck College. Rebecca is currently working

with Richard Hyman on a book on European trade unions, based on a three-year research project on challenges

facing trade unions in ten EU countries.

Richard Hyman is Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics. He has written extensively on

comparative history, political economy, trade unions and EU regulation. Recent publications include “European trade unions and the long march through the institutions: from integration to contention?” In: Fairbrother, Peter and

Hennebert, Marc-Antonin and Lévesque, Christian, (eds.) Transnational trade unionism: new capabilities and

prospects. Routledge. 2012.

Sahra Ryklief is General Secretary of the International Federation of Workers’ Education Associations and past

director of the Labor Research Service in South Africa. She has authored many reports and articles on trade unions

and informal economy workers.

Susan J. Schurman is Professor and Acting Dean of the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers –

The State University of New Jersey. She is the current President of the International Federation of Workers

Education Associations and President Emeritus of the National Labor College. Her research focuses on trade

union effectiveness, workplace safety and health and worker’ education and training. Recent publications

include: Labor Deserves Credit: "The Popular Education Foundations of the National Labor College." In P. Finn

and M. Finn (Eds.). Teacher Education with an Attitude: Preparing Teachers to Educate Working Class Students

in Their Collective SelfInterest. SUNY Press. 2007.

Verna Dinah Q. Viajar is a Senior Researcher at the Labour Education and Research Network (LEARN). Ms. Viajar

has extensive research experience in labor studies including issues on changing employment patterns, impacts of

economic globalization on labor organizing, and the trade union movements in Asia and the Philippines. She has an

MA in Labour Policies and Globalization from the University of Kassel and Berlin School of Economics in

Germany and a BA degree in Political Science from the University of the Philippines. She formerly worked as

Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of

the Philippines from 2008-2011.

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Mihai Varga is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute where he studies the way states contain or

facilitate with collective action – particularly in post-communist Europe. His 2011 doctoral dissertation is titled

Striking with tied hands: Strategies of labour interest representation in post-communist Romania and Ukraine.

Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND MAJOR FINDINGS........................................................... 4

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 5

METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................... 7

DEFINING THE “INFORMAL ECONOMY” ........................................................................ 8

WHO WORKS IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY? ............................................................... 9

FORMS OF INFORMAL ECONOMY ORGANIZATION .................................................. 11

THE INFORMAL ECONOMY IN AFRICA ......................................................................... 12

Summary of key trade union strategies ....................................................................... 21

Conclusions: Implications for trade union policy formulation. .................................. 23

TRADE UNIONS AND INFORMAL ECONOMY WORKERS IN ASIA .......................... 24

Overview of Industrial Relations in Asia.................................................................... 25

Conclusions: comparisons and policy implications .................................................... 32

TRADE UNION ORGANIZING THE INFORMAL ECONOMY WORKERS IN LATIN

AMERICA .............................................................................................................................. 35

The Informal Economy in Latin America ................................................................... 38

Conclusions and Policy Implications .......................................................................... 44

NORTH AMERICA: UNITED STATES AND CANADA ................................................... 44

Unions and Informal/Non-standard Work ................................................................. 46

Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 58

EUROPEAN TRADE UNIONS AND ‘ATYPICAL’ WORKERS ....................................... 59

‘Atypical’ and ‘Informal’ Employment in Western Europe ....................................... 60

SUMMARY AND OVERALL CONCLUSIONS.................................................................. 71

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND MAJOR FINDINGS

The purpose of this report is to review the existing literature on efforts throughout the globe

by workers who labor outside the formal labor and employment relations policy framework of

their country to form or join trade unions as well as unions’ efforts to organize and represent

them. Globalization - the expansion and integration of market-based economic policies - has

driven a worldwide decline in the number of workers in the primary labor market with

“standard” employment – stable, long term employment with a single employer and covered by

various legal and social protections - and accompanying increases in the secondary, informal and

illegal labor markets.

Informal economy work includes a wide range of occupations and economic activities

roughly divided into “dependent” wage earners and self-employed or “own-account

entrepreneurs. The case examples included in this report cover domestic work, construction, taxi

drivers; truck drivers, street vendors, waste-pickers, home-based work, day laborers and others.

Informal work globally shares one important feature. It is either not covered or insufficiently

covered by national legal and regulatory frameworks and social protection schemes. Informal

workers have been characterized as lacking seven essential securities: labor market security,

employment security, job security, work security, skill reproduction security, income security

and representation security. Trade unions and collective action have historically played a critical

role redressing this last type of insecurity and with it many if not all of the others. This is the

focus of this report. While unions have been slow to respond to the needs of informal workers,

these workers themselves have often formed their own organizations (often referred to as

Member-Based Organizations of the Poor – MBOP) and often with the assistance of Non-

Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Unions are increasingly working with MBOPs, affiliating

MBOPS into their existing structures or organizing informal workers on their own. Details of

our findings are contained in the full report. Below we highlight the major cross-cutting findings

that emerge from studies in five regions: Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and

Europe.

The line of demarcation between formal and informal employment is blurring and it

appears that this trend is likely to continue in the foreseeable future. This may

reflect a permanent shift in the nature of work of the same magnitude as the shift from

agrarian to industrial economies in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In most countries the national legal frameworks governing employment and labor

relations are geared to formal employment and standard jobs, leaving a growing

number of types of work and workers excluded from the basic protections of the law.

Informalization has a disproportionate impact on women in all countries and

regions.

There is a strong correlation between globalization and migration and immigration

and informal work as a survival strategy. Immigrants present a particular challenge to

national unions seeking to include informal economy workers.

Organized labor movements throughout the world have faced common struggles in

expanding the scope of their membership or constituencies.

5

o Throughout the world, unions have typically defined their membership as

employees working for a particular employer or set of employers within an

industry, or what can be called a “wage culture” and the first position taken by

most unions in regard to informalization was to oppose it and exclude the workers

involved.

o Many unions have moved past this position and started to develop new

approaches for including non-standard and informal economy workers.

Organized labor movements throughout the world have also faced common

struggles in altering their structures.

o One of the central questions for trade unions is how best to relate to the NGOs or

MBOPs that have often taken the lead in organizing informal workers.

o Unions at different levels – international, national centers/federations, and

national unions have different roles to play.

Organized labor movements throughout the world have faced common struggles in

expanding the scope of their membership or constituencies and altering their

representational strategies.

o Traditional strategies - collective bargaining and participation in the political

system either through alliance with a political party, through the institutions of

social dialogue or other means - remain important.

o Another important strategy for almost all types of informal workers is gaining

access to various types of social protections including employment law and social

insurance.

o But many informal workers need approaches (cooperatives, insurance, access to

capital, and business skills) that address their needs as very small scale

entrepreneurs. This aspect of representation of informal workers moves most

traditional unions beyond their comfort zone.

o Education and skill building of various kinds play a critically important role in

union strategies.

Despite many similarities, there remain significant differences across and regions and

countries based on the role of the state and law, the role and nature of employers

and the strength and nature of the unions themselves. There are, in particular,

differences between the approaches and needs in the global north and south, though there

are also real opportunities for learning across those boundaries.

Despite a growing literature on this topic, too little is known about what works for

organizing informal economy workers. There are many examples of union organizing

of informal workers that have not been documented in reports or case studies and the

published literature often fails to provide sufficient details.

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INTRODUCTION

Although international trade is hardly a new phenomenon, since the 1970s a process now

known as globalization or economic globalization has been underway which is different from

previous international economic activity. Specifically, “globalization” refers to the reduction of

tariffs, taxes and other impediments to trade among nations and “economic globalization” refers

to the ensuing integration of markets. The process of globalization has dramatically increased

the mobility of capital across national borders thereby increasing the interdependence of

developed and developing countries and creating intensified competition across a broad range of

markets – especially labor markets.1 Globalization has been a major factor behind significant

changes in the employment and labor relations systems of both developed and developing

nations on such basic characteristics as wage levels, labor deployment and labor standards.2

While there is a substantial literature on multinational firms’ global human resource

management practices, there has been much less focus on the effects of these practices on

workers in different national contexts.3 The management literature shows clearly that the

dominant human resource management approach involves a search for flexibility – both numeric

and functional - but also involves a concerted effort to escape or circumvent the regulatory

employment frameworks achieved by trade unions and their political allies during the 20th

century. The result is a worldwide decline in the number of workers in the primary labor market

with “standard” employment – stable, long term employment with a single employer and covered

by various legal and social protections - and accompanying increases in the secondary, informal

and illegal labor markets.

However, because there are significant differences in nations’ level of development and their

industrial relations systems, the specific effects of globalization vary from country to country4.

One of the most significant differences among nations’ industrial relations systems is the legal

framework defining which workers’ are eligible to exercise freedom of association rights to form

or join trade unions for the purposes of representing their interests in the employment

relationship and/or in the broader economic policies of the nation.

The purpose of this report is to review the existing literature on efforts throughout the globe

by workers who labor outside the formal labor and employment relations policy framework of

their country to form or join trade unions as well as unions’ efforts to organize and represent

them.

1 F. Traxler, S. Blaschke and B. Kittel, National Labour Relations in Internationalized Markets: A Comparative

Study of Institutions, Change, and Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 2 G. Gereffi and T.J. Sturgeon, “Globalization, Employment, and Economic Development: A Briefing Paper”

(MIT IPC Working Paper, No. 04-006, 2004); Eddy Lee, “Globalization and Employment: Is Anxiety Justified?”

International Labor Review 135 (1996): 485-98. 3 D.G. Collings, “Multinational Corporations and Industrial Relations Research: A Road Less Traveled.”

International Journal of Management Reviews 10 (2008): 173-93. 4 For a comprehensive review see M. Morley, P. Gunnigle, and D.G. Collings, eds., Global Industrial Relations

(London: Routledge, 2006).

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The report is organized as follows: first we present a brief description of our approach to the

research. This is followed by a more detailed discussion of the globalization process and the

growth of the informal economy. We then present regional reports from our global research

team covering Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and Western, Eastern and Central

Europe.5 The final section of the report contains a more detailed discussion of our major

findings and conclusions drawn from the regional reports.

METHODOLOGY

We chose to use regions as the basic unit of analysis both for theoretical and practical

reasons. In terms of theory, existing comparative labor and employment relations systems

research points to “regionality” as a useful lens to understand “varieties of capitalism.” 6

Practically, it was most effective for reasons of geography and language to assign members of

the team with expertise in a region to review the literature of that particular region and to write

that section of the report.

The literature we reviewed consists of both academic and more popular publications along

with unpublished reports and organizational websites. We also reviewed statistics on the extent

and nature of the informal economy and informal work in each region as collected and published

by various transnational and governmental organizations. The goal of these regional reviews

was twofold: first we wanted to provide a broad overview of union activities by, with and for

informal economy workers. In addition to the broad overview, we wanted to look more closely

at a subset of case studies in particular countries which may or may not be representative of the

activities in the broader region but do illustrate both some commonalities and differences in

strategies and approaches.

Each regional section gives context to the topic at hand by providing a general overview of

the patterns of industrial relations systems in the region and estimates of various forms of

informal work. Each regional section also discusses union activity but there is some variation in

approach based in part on the size and complexity of the region and the literature available in the

region. Thus, the section on Africa provides brief descriptions of union activities in a wide

range of African countries but treats two, Ghana and South Africa in more depth while Asia

covers particular cases of union organizing in eight countries (India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan,

Hong Kong,7 Bangladesh, Philippines and Cambodia). The Latin American section likewise

provides an overview of many countries but discusses three in more depth, Guatemala, Columbia

and Mexico. The North American section, covering only two countries with a similar industrial

relations framework, focuses more on representative cases as well as on significant differences in

the legal framework that appear to influence the opportunities for unions to organize informal

economy workers. The section on Europe is more conceptual and analytical and provides a

useful approach to regional comparisons. For Europe we were able to take advantage of a more

extensive study by the authors.

The regional sections provide summaries and conclusions about successes, challenges and

patterns within the region. The final section of the report draws on these regional conclusions to

5 We did not include the Middle East in any of these regions.

6 Morley, Gunnigle and Collings, Global Industrial Relations.

7 Not, technically, a country, of course, but a unique city within a larger country.

8

present a larger set of observations that identify patterns or issues that cross the regions. We

conclude with questions that remain largely unanswered by this review.

DEFINING THE “INFORMAL ECONOMY”

Establishing a commonly used global definition of the informal economy has generated much

discussion and controversy over the past 30 years. Pioneering theorists Castells and Portes

described the term “informal economy” as a “common-sense notion” in their seminal work on

the subject in 1989/8 Eschewing notions of economic dualism and marginality, they highlighted

the inextricable link between the formal and informal sectors in most economies and isolated the

essential feature as being the lack of regulation in societies where similar activities are being

regulated. They also drew attention to the causal link between highly regulated economies and

de-regulation.9

In its 2002 resolution concerning Decent Work and the Informal Economy,10

the

International Labor Conference (ILC) of the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) defined

the informal economy as:

All economic activities by workers and economic units that are - in law or in practice - not

covered or insufficiently covered by formal arrangements. Their activities are not included in the

law, which means that they are operating outside the formal reach of the law; or they are not

covered in practice, which means that – although they are operating within the formal reach of the

law, the law is not applied or not enforced; or the law discourages compliance because it is

inappropriate, burdensome or imposes excessive cost.

According to the ILC definition, workers who may be covered by statutory regulation which

is either inadequate, or difficult to impossible to implement, are also categorized as informal

economy workers.

An adaptation of “dual labor market theory”11

provides one way to conceptualize the

growing fluidity of labor market boundaries. In their early formulation, Doeringer and Piore

argued, from a U.S. perspective, that labor markets reflect a class, race and gender stratification

where the primary sector was populated primarily by (mostly white) males in unionized heavy

industry or white collar jobs, the secondary sector by females and lower skilled males, and the

informal sector by people unable to access the other two for reasons of race, gender or skill

levels. Later research showed that the boundaries were more fluid than initially conceived and

that many people in the primary labor market also chose to engage in the informal sector either

as their primary source of income or to supplement their primary income.12

8 A. Portes, M. Castells, and L.A. Benton, The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed

Countries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1989), 11. 9 Portes, Castells, and Benton, The Informal Economy, 12-13.

10 “Decent Work and the Informal Economy” (paper presented at the International Labor Conference 90

th

Session, 2002), 3, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/relm/ilc/ilc90/pdf/rep-vi.pdf. 11

P. Doeringer, and M. Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, MA:

Heath/Lexington Books, 1971). 12

For a review of informal economy typologies see J. Losby et al., “Informal Economy Literature Review,”

ISED Consulting and Research and the Aspen Institute, 2002, http://www.kingslow-assoc.com/images/

Informal_Economy_Lit_Review.pdf.

9

Primary Sector Secondary Sector Informal Sector Illegal Sector

Regular wage

Job security

Well regulated

Uncertain wage

Less job security

Poorly regulated

Self- employment

Casual labor

unregulated

Criminalized

Unregulated

Figure 1 presents a typology of labor markets and shows shifts from one type to another

resulting from globalization pressures. This graphic representation shows the impact of

globalization on labor markets is a result of a single set of forces but with different impacts on

employment both between and among countries but also within particular countries. The

literature suggests that the shrinkage of the primary sector has two sources. The first source is

from job eliminations as corporations have moved production to less regulated and lower labor

cost countries. The second source is productivity increases derived from converting standard

jobs to flexible work arrangements within the “formal” economy. These changes create a chain

reaction in which workers in the primary sector are pushed into the secondary sector and the

latter into the informal sector. While this process has been going on for several decades, the

economic downturn of the past five years has clearly accelerated the process. The disappearance

of jobs in the formal economy, which was the major source of trade union membership and

influence in the twentieth century, has not been offset by growth of unionization in the secondary

or informal labor market. The result has been a decline in unionization rates in most parts of the

world.13

As a result many unions and labor federations around the world are turning their

attention to the question of how to organize workers in these sectors where, in many cases, there

is no legal framework covering the workers’ occupations and/or no identifiable employer with

whom to create a collective bargaining agreement.

WHO WORKS IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY?

In order to fully appreciate the challenges informal economy workers face in seeking to form

or join unions and unions face in trying to assist them, it is important to note the diversity of

those working in the informal economy because the problems and needs vary across forms. For

example, many are engaged in basic survival activities; others are piece workers or home

workers, whose relationship with an employer is not recognized or protected. The self-employed

and micro-enterprise employers face various barriers and constraints to setting up and operating

formal enterprises. Informal economy workers include “own-account” workers in survival type

13

C. Frege. “International Trends in Unionization,” in see Morley, Gunnigle and Collings, Global Industrial

Relations.

Globalization

Figure 1

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activities, such as day laborers, street vendors, shoe shiners, garbage collectors and scrap- and

rag-pickers; domestic workers employed by households; home-workers and workers in

sweatshops who are “disguised wage workers” in production chains; and the self-employed in

micro-enterprises operating on their own, as well as their contributing family workers,

apprentices and employees. In some parts of the world employers are increasing their use of

“independent contractor” status to avoid creating an employment relationship with its attendant

obligations, part of a grown phenomenon termed “employer distancing.”

These different groups have been termed “informal” because they share one important

characteristic - they are either completely not, or insufficiently recognized or protected under the

legal and regulatory frameworks. This is not, however, the only defining feature of informality.

The ILC report also describes the situation of informal economy workers and entrepreneurs in

terms of seven essential securities14

, which are often denied to them:

• labor market security (adequate employment opportunities through high levels of

employment ensured by macroeconomic policies);

• employment security (protection against arbitrary dismissal, regulation on hiring and

firing, employment stability compatible with economic dynamism);

• job security (a niche designated as an occupation or “career”, the opportunity to develop

a sense of occupation through enhancing competences);

• work security (protection against accidents and illness at work, through safety and health

regulations, limits on working time etc.);

• skill reproduction security (widespread opportunities to gain and retain skills, through

innovative means as well as apprenticeships and employment training);

• income security (provision of adequate incomes); and

• representation security (protection of collective voice in the labor market through

independent trade unions and employers’ organizations and social dialogue institutions).

As Figure 1 and the ILC definition make clear, there is no sharp dividing line between formal

or standard employment, precarious work or informal work. Even within the formal sector many

workers lack one or more of the seven essential securities. In addition, during their working

careers and sometimes even during their working day, individuals have always moved back and

forth across the formal/informal boundary. Indeed, as Cobble and Vosko have pointed out,

“standard” employment is a recent historical phenomenon and constructed around the idea of a

single (typically male) wage-earner. Women have always constituted a disproportionate share of

the informal economy in most countries.15

Cobble and Vosko suggest that the growing attention

to the informal economy is precisely because more men are being pushed into it.

14

“Decent Work and the Informal Economy”, 3. Originally from Guy Standing, 1997, “Globalization, Labor

Flexibility and Insecurity: The Era of Market Regulation”, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 3(1): 7-37. 15

D.S. Cobble and L. Vosko, 2000, “Historical Perspectives on Representing Nonstandard Workers,” in

Nonstandard Work: the Nature and Challenges of Changing Employment Arrangements, eds. F. Carré et al.

(Champaign, IL: Industrial Relations Research Association), 331-9.

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FORMS OF INFORMAL ECONOMY ORGANIZATION

Autonomous organization in the informal economy is a relatively recent global phenomenon.

Chen, Jhabavala et al. call these organizations “Membership-based organizations of the very

poor (MBOPs).”16

The exponential rise of informal economy MBOPs globally has also resulted

in the creation of higher level organizations through the formation of international networks of

organizations representing street vendors, home-based workers, domestic workers, waste

collectors, informal transport workers, agricultural and fishing workers in the past decade.

Table 1 illustrates a model pioneered by Francoise Carré17

and refined by WIEGO

illustrating that informal economy organizing models and organizing strategies are inextricably

linked. Often organizations use more than one strategy, although it is likely that they have one or

more that can be considered as primary strategies.18

Those that have adopted the trade union

model have often sought dialogue, co-operation and full association with existing trade unions.19

While autonomous organizations of informal workers may or may not self-define as trade

unions, established, traditional unions throughout the globe have been gradually taking an

increased interest in the organization and representation of these same workers. This has not

been the initial response of most unions to growing informalization. As various scholars have

noted, unions have typically sought first to prohibit or limit informal work and/or to paint

16

M. Chen et al., “Memberships Based on Organizations of the Poor”, 2, http://www.arts.cornell.edu/ poverty/

kanbur/MBOPVolumeOverview.pdf. 17

F. Carré et al., eds, Nonstandard Work: the Nature and Challenges of Changing Employment Arrangements,

(Champaign, IL: Industrial Relations Research Association), 331-9. 18

Christine Bonner, “Domestic Workers around the World: Organising for Empowerment” (paper presented at

the Social Law Project Conference, 2010), 16. 19

A. Yaw Baah, A. Britwum, and A. Akorsu, “A Report of the International Conference on Organising in the

Informal Economy, Accra, Ghana,” (paper presented Sep. 2006), 12-22.

Table 1

12

informal workers as somehow illegitimate and thus best ignored and excluded.20

This is made all

the easier when the gender, race, age or immigration status of informal workers differs

substantially from the traditional membership base of the unions. However, growing numbers of

traditional unions throughout the globe are opening their organizations to informal workers. In

the regional sections below, we describe multiple examples of such openings and the attendant

efforts to include informal workers and improve their working conditions and incomes.

THE INFORMAL ECONOMY IN AFRICA

Sahra Ryklief

The fragmentation of labor markets in the wake of globalization has severely affected

incomes and employment in the fragile formal sectors of Africa south of the Sahara. African

societies are predominantly agrarian, and the majority of African populations reside in rural

areas, drawing their livelihoods in non-wage activities related to the agricultural sector. If we add

to this the fact that at the turn of this century 80% of the total non-agricultural employment was

informal employment, as was over 60 per cent of urban employment and over 90% of new jobs

in Africa created in the previous decade21

, any division between formal and informal begins to

lose meaning.

Mapping the extent of the informal economy in Africa is difficult, as many countries do not

keep accurate statistics and there are also considerable differences of definitions. It is general

knowledge that the informal economy in Africa is dominated by retail trade related activities, to

the extent that even formal distributors and manufacturers use informal workers to expand their

markets to low income groups. The informal economy is estimated as contributing 55% to the

GDP of African countries south of the Sahara, including agricultural activities (this rises to 60%

if South Africa and Botswana are excluded) and 30.4% of North Africa.22

Workers in the informal economy are characterized by having lower education and literacy

levels compared to the formal sector; by earning much lower wages ( from 44 to 84 %); by

working longer hours and by having higher proportions of women and children employed.23

Post-colonial industrial relations in Africa.

Early industrial relations systems in Africa were rooted in colonial (or in the case of South

Africa and Namibia, apartheid) regimes which created wage work through the exploitation of

primary natural resources.24

These colonial origins limited economic activity and hence the

20

See, for instance, E. Heery, “Trade Unions and Contingent Labour: Scale and Method,” Cambridge Journal

of Regions Economy and Society 2 (2009) and E. Cerviño, “Trade Union Strategies Towards Atypical Workers,

(Working Paper) Madrid: Juan March Institute, 2000. 21

J. Charmes, “Measurement of the Contribution of the Informal Sector/Informal Employment in GDP in

Developing Countries,” Expert Group on Informal Statistics, Delhi Group, 2000, 16, http://www.unescap

.org/stat/isie/reference-materials/National-Accounts/Measurement-Contribution-GDP-Concept-Delhi-Group.pdf. 22

Charmes, “Measurement of the Contribution,” 8. 23

Sher Verick, “The Impact of Globalization on the Informal Sector in Africa,” 2006, 6-7, http://www.iza.org/

conference_files/worldb2006/verick_s872.pdf. 24

Frank M. Horwitz, “Industrial Relations in Africa,” in see Morley, Gunnigle, and Collings, Global Industrial

Relations, 179.

13

growth of the labor market, with only a segment of the indigenous population able to take up

opportunities in the formal economy. In Africa, informalization has a long history, as social and

economic relations relied heavily on unregulated work as a means of driving down labor costs in

the formal economy, to ensure maximum appropriation of wealth. The informal economy has

always been the dominant portion of the economies of most African countries25

. It remains the

main response to Africa’s continued weak development and integration into the global

economy.26

In the 1960s and 1970s, many African countries achieved independence and introduced

industrial relations systems. State independence allowed African workers, who were once

discriminated against based on race, the opportunity to organize themselves legally into trade

unions. The origins of many African trade unions were often directly related to the African

nationalist liberation movements which spawned them. In their formative years during anti-

colonial struggles, African trade unions were similar to social movements where workers were

organized against the existing political regime. Nurtured by the former liberation movements in

control of the new governments, African trade union organization flourished for a brief period in

the 1960s – 1970s, supported by the rising economic growth which characterized the first decade

of post colonialism.

However, this growth was short-lived, and by the late 1970s the global economic crisis left

most African states facing deep and prolonged economic decline. During the 1980s virtually all

African governments were subject to Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) required by the

International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or Western Aid donors.27

SAPs have had grievous

consequences for African labor markets, resulting in “retrenchments and job insecurity, wage

restraints and the suspension of benefits, soaring consumer prices and user charges for public

services, flexible management practices and subcontracting, and an intensification of managerial

efforts to increase labor productivity.”28

Unable to achieve sustainable post-colonial growth and development, Africa’s economies are

characterized by “a small formal sector with the majority of the population confined to

subsistence agriculture and informal activities.”29

In the context of this neo-liberal restructuring

for three decades, formal sector employment represents a shrinking proportion of the

economically active population.30

African enterprise can be summarized into three categories:

public enterprises where the state owns at least 50 percent of the organization, private indigenous

enterprises which are characterized by informal and precarious work arrangements, and

multinational companies, foreign subsidiaries and joint-venture organizations.31

Private

indigenous enterprises increased after the imposition of SAPs, engendering “union membership

decline with contracting formal employment, growing informalization and casualization, a

25

Anthony Baah, “Organizing in the Informal Economy: Experiences and Lessons from Africa, Asia, and Latin

America,” (paper presented at Ghana’s Trades Union Congress/LO/FTF (Denmark) Project, Nov. 2006), 8. 26

Ilda Lindell, “Building Alliances Between Formal and Informal Workers: Experiences from Africa” in Labor

and Challenges of Globalization: What Prospects for International Solidarity? eds. A. Bieler, I. Lindberg, and D.

Pillay, (Scotsville: UKZN Press, 2008), 218. 27

Piet Konings, “African Trade Unions and the Challenge of Globalization: a Comparative Study of Ghana and

Cameroon” in The Future of Organized Labor: Global Perspectives, ed. Craig Phelan, (Bern: Peter Lang AG,

2007), 361. 28

Konings, “African Trade Unions,” 362. 29

ANSA: Alternatives to Neo-Liberalism in Southern Africa, http://www.ansa-afrika.org/. 30

Lindell, “Building Alliances,” 218. 31

Horwitz, “Industrial Relations in Africa,” 181-2.

14

hardening of employer positions in collective bargaining with increasingly precarious,

unprotected and insecure employment models being adopted.”32

Enterprises are able to take

advantage of a large pool of precarious labor in the informal economy to drive down protections

and wages. These economic developments have invariably had a deleterious effect on trade union

organization, as well as on their socio-economic and political influence.

African Trade Union Organization in the Informal Economy.

In the context of colonialism and weak economic development, trade union density and

power in Africa have always had endemic weaknesses. Unlike the developed economies, unions

have never represented a large proportion of the working population, and in pursuit of expanding

the wage economy under difficult circumstances they have concerned themselves almost

exclusively with defending and advancing wage employment and those employed in the formal

economy.

Organizing a minority of the working population in a shrinking formal sector made up

predominantly of public sector wage workers in poverty stricken populations, many African

trade unions are, in addition, bound by their formative ties to the ruling parties which presided

over the implementation of harsh SAP measures for decades. Consequently these unions place

much emphasis on their waning political influence over these parties. There is general agreement

that African trade unions are facing “a deep crisis of identity, having not yet devised any new

strategies to deal with these dramatic changes.”33

In order to recruit and represent informal

workers, as well as to relate effectively to the different kinds of associations informal workers

are organizing for themselves requires unions to revise both their concepts of political alliance

and of which occupations and activities constitute “workers.”

Union response to the exponential growth of informal economy workers has been slow.

Devenish and Skinner cite the diversity of economic activities and spatial location; their often

negative previous experience of organization; the lack of an identifiable employer and the

necessity of competition with each other as being the main barriers to trade union organization of

informal economy workers.34

Inevitably informal economy workers had already begun self-

organizing initiatives before attracting the attention of trade unions. This has resulted in highly

diverse strategies being employed by African trade unions, “ranging from antagonism to full

integration.”35

Not all of these organizations conform to the traditional trade union model. The WIEGO

Organization and Representation Database (WORD)36

, which is regularly updated, contains the

contact details, scope, type of workers and occupation of almost 200 African member based

organizations spanning the top ten sectors in the informal economy.37

The database gives a good

indication of the diversity of member based organizations in the informal economy. In Africa,

32

Horwitz, “Industrial Relations in Africa,” 181. 33


Annie Devenish and Caroline Skinner. “Organising Workers in the Informal Economy: The Experience of

the Self-Employed Women’s Union, 1994-2004.” School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal,

11-12, http://www.ifwea.org/@Bin/148860/2004SEWUExperience.pdf. 35

Lindell, “Building Alliances,” 219-22. 36

WIEGO Organization and Representation Database WORD, www.wiegodatabase.org. 37

Vendors; home-based workers; domestic workers; transport workers; construction workers; sex workers;

waste pickers; agricultural workers; other – incl. carpenters/marketers/hairdressers/tomato traders etc.

15

informal economy worker organizations that have adopted the trade union model have often

sought dialogue, co-operation and full association with existing African trade unions.38

African case studies of unions organizing informal economy workers

The WIEGO database (WORD)39

reveals at least 190 informal economy associations in Africa,

ranging from MBOPS to CBOs to co-operatives to NGOs to Trade Unions. This review does not

cover all the trade unions featured in WORD, because, there is as yet insufficient documentation

of empirical details pertaining to union organization and even fewer analyses of successes and

failures of union strategy. Although the case studies presented below are too sporadic to draw

definitive conclusions for the entire continent, they are sufficient to allow for preliminary

conclusions to be drawn, specifically those which direct future investigation for union policy

formulation. This section is divided into two parts. First, very brief sketches of union

organizing of informal workers is presented for several sub-Saharan African countries. Second,

more in-depth case studies are presented from South Africa and Ghana. These countries were

chosen for several reasons. Both South Africa and Ghana have diverse and rich mineral resource and

agricultural bases. Both countries have demonstrated “jobless growth” in the past decade, in which

the GDP has risen but formal employment has dropped; both countries have stable industrial

relations systems and active trade unions which have consistently demonstrated their capacity

and willingness to engage broadly on issues of de-regulation. In order to illuminate analysis of

the cases from both these countries, a brief overview of the scope of informal economy and

pertinent industrial relations issues are provided as a preface.

Benin The UNSTB (National Union of the Unions of the Workers of Benin) represents and

provides education for informal economy workers. They claim to be the first to extend social

security and pension benefits coverage to informal economy workers, and have also facilitated

credit access. They have signed collective bargaining agreements that cover informal economy

workers and provide education and training for collective bargaining.40

The National Union of Motorbike Taxis (SYNAZEB) provides welfare assistance to and

negotiates for taxis drivers with government and city authorities. Their membership covers

drivers and their service providers, including roadside petrol sellers, street cleaners and vendors

at stations. They cite their main challenge as being government hostility to environmental

pollution caused by the motor bikes of their members, and their weakness as being the absence

of state policy in the sector and irregular contributions of members.41

Mozambique The Street vendor association, Associacao dos Operadores e Trablhadores do

Sector Informal (ASSOTSI), is a full affiliate of the trade union national center Organisacao dos

Trabalhadores Mocambicanos Central Sindical (OTM-CS). OTM-CS also waives the affiliation

fee for ASSOTSI, which is registered as a union, but still struggling to get legal recognition from

city municipality.42

38

Yaw Baah, Britwum and Akorsu, “A Report of the International Conference.” 39

WIEGO. 40



Lindell, “Building Alliances,” 223-5.

16

Niger The USTN formed a federation of informal sector workers, and succeeded in getting

access to social security for some workers.43

Nigeria The Nigerian Labor Congress organizes through identified target groups of workers

e. g. domestic workers, yam sellers, photographers and acts as a guarantor for them to access

small and micro credits.44

Tanzania Various groups of informal construction workers formed the Tanzanian

Association of Informal Construction Workers (TAICO) in 2007. The association’s objectives

are to “safeguard the interests of informal construction workers and pioneer for policy changes

and access to markets.45

TAICO negotiates for vocational certification, contractor registration

and a reduction of contractor registration fees. It negotiates for access to public works projects

and social/developmental construction projects such as the World Bank funded Tanzania Social

Action Fund. TAICO has had talks with the Tanzanian Mines and Construction Workers’ Union

(TAMICO), which organizes formal (wage) workers, and agreement has been reached for

TAICO to become a member of TAMICO, although this affiliation has not yet been realized.46

Uganda The National Alliance of Informal Economy Workers Organizations, formed in

2004, is an affiliate of the national center, Central Organization of Free Trade Unions (COFTU).

They have applied for legal registration, but were not yet registered at the time of Lindell’s study

in 2008.47

Zambia The Alliance for Zambian Informal Economy Associations (AZIEA) is the national

umbrella organization for associations of informal workers in Zambia. Launched in October

2002, it is the result of a project on organizing in the informal economy undertaken by the

Workers’ Education Association of Zambia (WEAZ), an affiliate of the International Federation

of Workers Education Associations (IFWEA), and the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions

(ZaCTU). AZIEA has associate membership with the national center, Zambian Congress of

Trade Unions, and is also a member of StreetNet International.48

Zimbabwe The Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations (ZCIEA) is also

associated to ZiCTU (Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions) but not affiliated. It was launched

from an informal economy project of the ZCTU-CTUC and claims to have 125 affiliates.49

Ghana In Ghana, out of the estimated total workforce of 9 million, 86% (7.7 million) is

engaged in the informal economy leaving a small fraction in the formal economy.50

Of Ghana’s

informal workforce, the majority, 63%, are self-employed agriculture workers,51

while the

43



Jill Wells and Arthur Jason, “Employment Relationships and Organizing Strategies in the Informal

Construction Sector,” African Studies Quarterly 11:2 and 11 (2010): 117-8. 46

Wells and Jason, “Employment Relationships,” 117-8. 47


WIEGO. 49

WIEGO. 50

Baah, “Organizing in the Informal Economy,” 12. 51

Baah, “Organizing in the Informal Economy,” 12.

17

remaining 37% are in non-agricultural industries such as textile, mining and transportation.52

Ghana’s economic growth has averaged 6–7 percent since 2005.53

The unionization rate for informal workers in Ghana is extremely low with only 0.1% of the

workers in a union.54

The main national trade union center is Ghana’s Trade Union Congress

(TUC). The TUC was established in 1945 and was given exclusive rights to organize by the

Industrial Relations Act of 1965 which still governs the country’s industrial relations55

, although

this exclusivity no longer applies and several independent trade unions have since been formed,

including a second national center, the Ghana Federation of Labor (GFL) formed in 1998.

The TUC has protested the government’s deregulation policies and their exploitative effects

on informal workers and fiercely guards its hard-won independence from political parties.56

In

1996, the TUC adopted a policy to strengthen its organization by recruiting workers in the

informal sector. In an attempt to influence government policies, the TUC was instrumental in

forming the National Consultative Forum of Ghana Labor (1985), the National Economic Forum

in 199757

, and the Labor Enterprise Trust (LET) to encourage wage employment. The TUC has

successfully campaigned to expand national health insurance to include informal economy

workers (2003) and is currently advocating for a Basic Conditions of Employment act that will

cover informal economy employees as well.58

Ghana Union Cases

The Construction and Building Materials Workers Union organizes various informal

economy associations and has signed a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to cover both

formal and informal construction workers, which includes wages and health and safety

protections.59

The General Agricultural Workers’ Union organizes informal workers in the rural sector. The

Ghana Private road Transport Union organizes self-employed commercial drivers and vehicle

owners. The Local Government Workers’ Union allows informal economy associations to

affiliate as members. The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union also incorporates informal

economy associations representing hair dressers and tie-dyers as full affiliates.60

The Maritime and Dock Workers Union (MDU) formed a company to absorb unemployed

members who work as casual laborers. They report that the role of the union as an employer

creates a conflict of interest and has reduced confidence in the union from the currently

employed workers represented. Their response was to develop a CBA to cover the workers and

provide leadership training for worker representatives.61

52

Kwasi Anyemedu, “Trade Union Responses to Globalization: Case Study on Ghana,” International

Federation of Workers’ Education Association, 2000, 5, https://ifwea-org-bin.directo.fi/@Bin/fdbe84d091985

a1f0517a182fc2ca7be/1321893033/application/pdf/217846/Ghana%20globalisation%20case%20study.pdf. 53

“IDA at Work: Ghana’s Concerns—IDA’s Priorities,” World Bank, http://siteresources.worldbank.

org/IDA/Resources/IDA-Ghana.pdf. 54

Baah, “Organizing in the Informal Economy,” 16. 55

Anyemedu, “Trade Union Responses,” 2. 56



S. Ryklief and A. Yaw Baah, “Summary of Legislative Achievements Through Social Dialogue in Ghana and

South Africa,” (paper presented at FNV Consultant’s Week, Amsterdam. Sep. 2011). 59

Ryklief and Yaw Baah, “Summary of Legislative Achievements”. 60


Lindell, “Building Alliances,” 221-2.

18

The Timber and Wood Workers Union (TWU), provides skills training on managerial and

bookkeeping skills and grievance handling for several informal sector groups. They also provide

credit access and welfare schemes that can be extended to a social security scheme.62

South Africa Post-apartheid South Africa has experienced the restructuring of many

industries including manufacturing, textile, construction, and taxi which has resulted in the

informalization of much of the workforce. Presiding over the restructuring, ANC leader Thabo

Mbeki implemented the economic policy framework “Growth, Employment and Redistribution”

(GEAR). Mbeki earned the enmity of trade unions including key leaders and sectors of ANC

alliance partner Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) by subsuming all other

development policies to the priorities of GEAR which, despite its name, reduced employment

drastically.63

From 1993 until 2011, the average quarterly GDP Growth was 3.32 percent.64

In the period from 1995-2001, full-time employment of the economically active population

(EAP) declined by 20% while informal occupations rose by 17-31% of EAP65

. As a result of the

restructuring, “Employment practices were highly exploitative, with most workers being

employed on a casual, temporary, or ad hoc basis.”66

The growing trend of informalization of

work, within the formal economy and without, continues. During 2004 – 2005, 516 000 of the

658 000 jobs created were in the informal sector.67

A 2003 – 2004 report puts the EAP at 20.3

million, with 8.4 million registered unemployed; 6.6 million in the formal economy with

regulatory protections and secure employment; 3.1 million as “semi-formal” workers in

precarious forms of work, including outsourced, temporary, part-time and domestic workers; and

2.2 million in informal economic activities.68

In 1979, black unions were legalized and incorporated into the apartheid industrial relations

system. Throughout the 1980s black trade unions, utilizing their access to legal protections and

procedures, grew exponentially. The integration of the apartheid state control into all aspects of a

black worker’s existence made the link between workplace struggles and their political solution

inexorable, leading to high levels of politicization of black workers in these unions. Union

actions, growth, capacity of organization and strategic economic relevance gave them

considerable powers of mobilization. By 1985 COSATU and its smaller rival the National

Council of Trade Unions (NACTU) were launched, and trade unions were beginning to

consolidate their power on an industrial sector level. Mergers towards the formation of sectoral

unions followed the launch of both federations, and collective bargaining strategies became

62


Sahra Ryklief, “Does the Emperor Really Have no Clothes?” in Thabo Mbeki’s World: The Politics and

Ideology of the South African President, eds. S. Jacbo and R. Calland, (Scotsville: UKZN Press, 2002), 113. 64

“South Africa GDP Growth Rate,” Trading Economics, http://www.tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/gdp-

growth. 65

Franco Barchiesi, “Informality and Casualization as Challenges to South Africa’s Industrial Unionism:

Manufacturing Workers in the East Rand/Ekurhuleni Region in the 1990s,” African Studies Quarterly 11 (2010):

67-85. 66

Jane Barrett, “Organizing in the Informal Economy: A Case Study of the Minibus Taxi Industry in South

Africa,” ILO, 2003, 15, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_emp/@emp_ent/@ifp_s eed/ documents/

publication/wcms_117698.pdf. 67

Devan Pillay, “Globalisation and the Informalisation of Labor: The Case of South Africa,” in Labor and

Challenges of Globalisation: What Prospects for International Solidarity?, eds. A. Bieler, I. Lindberg, and D.

Pillay, (Scotsville: UKZN Press, 2008), 49. 68

Pillay, “Globalisation and the Informalisation of Labor,” 52.

19

increasingly sophisticated.69

Through collective action and bargaining the black unions

successfully reconfigured industrial relations in the country.

After the 1994 elections, labor relations legislation was overhauled, leading to the current

two central pieces of labor legislation: the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) of

1997 and the Labor Relations Act (LRA) of 1995.70

The BCEA sets out minimum standards for

most employers, excluding minimum wage requirements while the LRA facilitates collective

bargaining rights including the right to organize; however, if workers are not in any employment

contract, then they are not granted these rights. The BCEA also provides for state legislated

Sectoral Determinations which regulate wages, hours and basic conditions for vulnerable71

or

special sectors.72

South Africa currently has three national labor central federations, who collaborate relatively

effectively in statutory social dialogue arrangements. COSATU remains the largest and most

active in these forums. Their most recent accomplishment has been the adoption of the Decent

Work Country Program in 2010.

South African Union Cases

The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (SATAWU) and the National Taxi

Drivers’ Organization organize mini-bus taxi drivers. Spawned by the vast spatial disparities

caused by black urban relocation and the lack of public transport infrastructure to black

communities during the apartheid era, the mini-bus taxi sector is a critical element of the public

transport system, accounting for 65% of all public transport daily commuter trips, and employing

an estimated 185,000 workers. SATAWU claims to represent 10,000, of which 2,500 are paid

up members.73

The sector has been oversaturated for years, which has sparked violent “taxi-wars” among

taxi operators for routes, and bribery and corruption with regard to traffic laws and licensing

regulations. Although legally licensed to operate, the vast majority of taxi operators are highly

exploitative and do not register their employees or adhere to standards as outlined in the Basic

Conditions of Employment Act, which technically covers the non-owner drivers, queue marshals

and vehicle washers in the sector.74

These workers are usually classified as informal economy

workers because of the precarious nature of their employment along with their powerlessness to

make their employers register which leaves them with inadequate protection.

The same applies to the one million domestic workers in South Africa, who although covered

by a state legislated sectoral determination which sets wages, hours and other employment

regulations, remain inadequately protected due to their inability individually or collectively to

enforce these protections. There is a long history of organization, although the unions are

generally weak and unable to develop large membership. The South African Domestic Workers

Association (SADWA) was launched in 1981. In 1986, SADWA then became the South African

Domestic Workers Union (SADWU) affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions

(COSATU). COSATU disbanded the union in 1996, after multiple splits and financial problems.

69

Ryklief, “Does the Emperor,” 50-52. 70

Barrett, “Organizing in the Informal Economy,” 10. 71

Example: inter alia contract cleaning workers, domestic workers, farm worker, forestry workers, workers in

the hospitality sector, civil engineering and taxi drivers. 72

Example: child performers. 73

Barret, “Organizing in the Informal Economy,” ix. 74

Devenish and Skinner, “Organising Workers in the Informal Economy,” 13.

20

In 2000 some former leaders of SADWU formed SADSAWU (South African Domestic Service

and Allied Workers Union). There are several other small domestic workers unions in existence,

but none have the national profile of SADSAWU. The union is still active, although it struggles

to recruit and retain membership. The union claims representation of 15,000 in the Cape

Province and Kwa Zulu Natal, with 7,000 paid up members.75

In 2007, three rival construction unions in South Africa, the National Union of Mineworkers

(NUM), Building Construction and Allied Workers Union (BCAWU) and the South African

Building Workers’ Organization (SABAWO); all affiliates of the Building Workers

International, formed an alliance with the Labor Research Service, a Swiss union, UNIA and

Swedish union BYGNNADS to build a campaign directed at civil engineering construction

related to the 2010 soccer World Cup. Funded by several solidarity support organizations, they

launched the “Fair Games Fair Play” Campaign. The objective of the campaign was to use the

World Cup “to facilitate growth of union density in the sector, through promoting decent work

for non-standard workers in the construction industry.”

Organizing attempts in South Africa’s construction industry occur primarily in the formal

economy. Due to the precarious nature of work in the informal economy, it is difficult to sustain

lasting union membership since workers are only employed for the duration of a specific project.

Further, members are unable to pay union dues because of their unstable employment.76

The

principal strategy of unions has been “ensuring that the main contractor on a main project is held

responsible for employment standards, including wages, benefits, unemployment insurance,

conditions of work, health and safety of all workers on a given project, regardless of whether

they are employed by the main contractor or a subcontractor.”77

For the World Cup 2010 campaign the unions formed a steering committee which oversaw

the campaign with the LRS-employed campaign coordinator. The three year campaign led to

various improvements for construction workers involved in the World Cup 2010 including

production bonuses, transport, better facilities and health and safety improvements. There was a

total of 26 strikes during the campaign, and participating unions recruited 27,459 workers by the

end of 2009, equating to a 39% increase in union density in the sector since 2006. The “beyond”

element of the campaign was aimed at improving state regulations through a ban on labor

brokering and an improved and expanded Sectoral Determination. The campaign succeeded in

raising the minimum wage set in the Sectoral Determination from ZAR 2,200 in 2007 to ZAR

3,000 in 2009, and the call for a ban on labor brokering has been taken up by several South

African trade unions, including COSATU.78

The completion of the civil engineering projects in

early 2010 led to considerable job losses, and there is not yet any record of whether the unions

were able to retain the membership gained during the campaign.

The textile and garment industry was heavily affected by tariff reductions in the 1990’s and

the union lost thousands of members due to factory closures. The South African Clothing and

Textile Workers’ Union, has responded by broadening its scope of representation to include

home-based workers. Dues paying members have access to union benefits such as their health

75

Ryklief and Yaw Baah, “Summary of Legislative Achievements,” 2. 76

Tanya Goldman, “Organizing in the Informal Economy: A Case Study of the Building Industry in South

Africa,” International Federation of Workers’ Education Association, 2003, 32, https://ifwea-org-bin.directo.fi

/@Bin/407e55caeaa0d4f2e9d67515563d6cf6/1321848208/application/pdf/217849/Goldman%20building%20indust

ry%20case%20study.pdf. 77

Goldman, “Organizing in the Informal Economy,” 51-2. 78

M. Koen and A. Bahadur, “Fair Games, Fair Play: Evaluation of the BWI Decent Work Towards and Beyond

2010.” Labor Research Service, 2011, 8–11.

21

care, funeral and scholarships for dependents.79

The union also managed to include home-based

workers in the statutory bargaining council’s services and functions and wages a concerted battle

against employers who attempt to seek exemptions from extending agreements to cover home-

based workers in micro-enterprises.

In 1994, the Self Employed Women’s Union (SEWU), modeled on SEWA in India, was

formed. The union lasted a decade, declaring bankruptcy in 2004. Devenish and Skinner cite

SEWU’s successes as being, inter-alia, strengthening their members’ income earning capabilities

and access to credit; opening new opportunities by retraining and a broader empowerment of

members, from knowing their legal rights to knowing how to conduct a meeting. The main

weaknesses were the inability to reach sufficient scale of membership, with lapsed members and

insufficient dues being a particular problem. The unions also suffered from problems with

financial mismanagement and corruption.80

Summary of key trade union strategies

African trade unions have adopted one of three strategies:

1. To broaden the definition of workers they are legally entitled to represent

(expanding their bargaining unit) and recruit and organize informal economy

workers into a unitary sectoral trade union structure. Certain Ghana TUC unions,

SACTU and SATAWU in South Africa have adopted this approach.

2. To collaborate with no structural relationship through benevolent support and

advocacy on social dialogue levels, or occasional joint advocacy on campaigns of

common interest. COSATU, South Africa adopts this approach.81

3. To affiliate MBOPs into a structured “umbrella” federated relationship and

advocate nationally and internationally on their behalf.

The third option is the most prevalent strategy, pioneered and consistently pursued in Benin,

Mozambique, Ghana, Niger and Uganda to a greater extent, and Zambia and Zimbabwe to a

lesser extent (by forming an associate relationship rather than an affiliate relationship). These

unions or national labor federations provide assistance in the registration of informal economy

associations as trade unions and incorporate them as affiliates into the national centers, or into

the sector-federated unions of the national sectors.

This strategy has the advantages of bringing numbers into the national center while retaining

the informal association’s capacity for self-organization and enabling these structures to

influence one another, specifically enabling the informal economy association to influence the

agenda of the better placed (economically and politically) national center to articulate and

support the interests of informal economy workers.

At the same time, this strategy has not been entirely successful Lindell points to major

constraints due to the fact that the interests, needs and aspirations of self-employed informal

economy workers are often very different or may even collide with the members of existing trade

79

Devenish and Skinner, “Organising Workers in the Informal Economy,” 12. 80


Z. Vavi, “Address to the Informal Economy Conference, Cape Town.” (paper presented Dec. 2 2011), 2.

22

unions and that the structures and modalities of trade unions are ill-equipped to deal with these

workers.82

Former Ghana TUC General Secretary, Kwasi Adu Amankwha, summarized the main

obstacles to organization as being “low financial returns from the sector in relation to the cost of

organization, the absence of a ready package of benefits to attract informal sector operators, and

lack of previous experience in union organization.”83

Most unions who are pursuing this strategy agree, pointing to their own inability to sustain

membership and collect dues, which limits growth potential.84

The problem of sustaining

membership exclusively through a dues system among workers who never have sufficient

income to live on impedes growth and leads to a reduction of appropriate services/support or, if a

strategy of fundraising is adopted to pay for this, donor dependency.85

Often the viability of

these new unions is plagued by financial mismanagement or corruption, as in the case of

SEWU.86

These are not the only dangers. Ally, through a qualitative examination of SADSAWU,

argues that domestic workers have been demobilized and depoliticized by the democratic state.

The availability of an extended post-apartheid state apparatus for the protection of domestic

workers removed the necessity for domestic workers to join a union, leading to declining union

density in the sector. The state as the articulator, representative, and protector of domestic

workers' collective interests displaced the union in these roles, and depoliticized it.87

However,

Ally’s conclusion is contestable, specifically as state protections are pegged at basic minima of

standards and even these minima are inadequately implemented by employers. The union’s lack

of resources may impede its ability to protect individual workers through casework, but it

consistently attempts to improve both compliance and minima through advocacy and negotiation

with state and employer representatives on a social dialogue level. Thus although it may well be

argued that state protections have led to a reduced number of workers seeking union membership

making it structurally weak, it is difficult to accept that this has led to a de-politicization of the

trade union, especially when looking at SADSAWU leadership’s alliance building with key labor

and social NGOs, and its role in improving wages, working conditions and generalizing legal

protections for domestic workers nationally and regionally through their work with the Domestic

Workers’ Research Project (DWRP) and globally through the International Domestic Workers’

Network (IDWN).88

Despite the constraints, combining self-organization with a structural relationship to sectoral

unions and/or trade union central federations still seems to be a more promising approach than

simply relying on benevolent representation on social dialogue level.

In the first instance, benevolent representation and occasional joint advocacy and support

only succeed if the supporting trade unions remain both politically effective and politically

connected and are therefore able to mobilize support beyond their own membership in order to

82






Shireen Ally, “Domestic Worker Unionization in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Demobilization and

Depoliticalization by the Democratic State,” Politikon 35, 2008, 1-21, http://www.informaworld.com /smpp/content

~db=all~content=a794743512. 88

Domestic Workers Research Project, www.dwrp.org.za; “International Domestic Workers’ Network,” http://

www.idwn.info.

23

wield an influence disproportionate to their size.89

Few African trade unions can claim this

status.

Those that can, like COSATU, describe themselves as ‘social movement unions’ because

their articulation and mobilization efforts sometimes extends beyond merely servicing and

representing their members through institutionalized arrangements and boundaries. Devenish

and Skinner point out that informal workers attempts to organize themselves often stem from

their dissatisfaction with the benevolent articulation of their perceived interests by unions.90

Theron goes even further91

, describing the expectations of wage employment as a disincentive to

self-help for informal economy workers, and identifies the difficulties of developing mutually

beneficial reasons for association between waged workers and those in the informal economy.

In the second instance, participants at the international conference on organizing in the

informal economy in Accra identified as key needs the opportunity for national and/or municipal

registration as service providers; skills certification to improve production or trade; finance and

management skills certification; access to credit and savings; increased market access; and,

freedoms to trade effectively in order to bring contract and self-employed workers together.

Support and articulation for these interests are high on the agenda of the associations they form.

None of these are within the framework of most trade unions, and without real, structural

influence in existing trade unions, these interests are unlikely to be consistently and effectively

pursued.

Conclusions: Implications for trade union policy formulation

There is sufficient evidence that trade unions in Africa have taken the first and most

important step, namely to approach, initiate, collaborate with and/or represent informal economy

workers and their associations. These initiatives have revealed that several conceptual shifts have

to be made by trade unions for them to take organization further, these being:

• acknowledgement that the rigorous implementation of structural adjustment by ruling

parties, whether externally or internally imposed, has severely eroded unions’ political

influence in these parties and that they may need independent status in order to broaden

their alliances if they are to wield any significant influence;

• a combination of autonomous organization and collaborative, focused articulation is

likely to be more effective in facilitating improvements;

• a shift from a seeking to provide a ‘wage culture’ towards raising the profiles of co-

operatives and the “social economy” may prove to be more sustainable and effective in

developing mutual commonalities with informal economy workers.92

In conclusion, given the levels of informalization and poverty on the continent, Africa can be

seen as an “incubator” for union organization of the informal economy. Yet empirical

89



J. Theron and M. Visser, “Remember me When Your Ship Comes in: Cooperatives and the Need to Shift

From a Wage Culture,” (paper delivered at WIEGO Conference, Cape Town, 2011), 42. 92

Theron and Visser, “Remember Me,” 42.

24

information on existing endeavors is sparse. On-going research and documentation of initiatives

to provide concrete evidence and analysis is essential; it will assist by providing the basis for

improving organizational strategies, orientation and development.

TRADE UNIONS AND INFORMAL ECONOMY WORKERS IN ASIA

Verna Viajar

The Informal Economy in Asia

In most developing countries in the Asian region, a substantial percentage of their gross

domestic product (GDP) comes from the informal or ‘secondary’ economy. In the Philippines the

informal economy contributes more than 20% of its GDP while in Cambodia, 85% of total

workforce is engaged in the informal sector or precarious employment and according to some

estimates, India may be as high as 98% of total workforce.93

In Pakistan, it is estimated that 20

million persons are working in the informal sector, the majority of whom are women and

children.94

In Asia, the massive number of workers engaged in the informal sector combined

with the sector’s component of the economy means that informal and precarious work is

perceived as the norm rather than the exception. This chapter describes the organizing strategies

of trade unions and other social movements to assist workers in the informal sector in the Asian

region to organize. Selected examples are presented from the following countries: Bangladesh,

Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong-China, Nepal, Pakistan, and the Philippines. The cases

represent informal workers in the following sub-sectors: domestic work, construction, transport,

street vendors, waste-pickers and home-based work. These examples were selected because they

have been established for at least two years, are members-based, and are recognized by

regional/international trade unions (BWI, IUF, and ITUC) and non-government institutions such

as the ILO.

The informal economy in Asia is characterized by “small-scale units” of production of goods

and services with low levels of organization, vague differentiation between labor and capital, and

composed of independent, self-employed or own-account workers/producers working alone or

with others (i.e. unpaid family labor, hired workers or apprentices. In Cambodia, the small

producing units in the informal economy are characterized with very little or no capital; low

levels of technology and skills; low levels of productivity; low and irregular income and highly

unstable employment95

. Informal work in the Philippines is conducted either alone or in

partnership with members of the same or other households. Work arrangements are casual

without formal contracts and workers may be unpaid family members or employed on a

93

Rainier V. Almazan, “The Cambodian Construction Industry: Opportunities and Challenges for Workers and

their Trade Unions,” (research report submitted to the Building and Wood Workers International, Selangor,

Malaysia: Asia Pacific Regional Office, 2008). 94

“Home Based Workers Organising,” Action for a Progressive Pakistan, http://progpak.wordpress.com/2011

/06/24/home-based-workers-organizing/. 95

This section is based on “Decent Work in the Informal Economy in Cambodia: A Literature Review,”

Economic Institute of Cambodia, Bangkok: International Labour Office, 2006, 12.

25

temporary/seasonal basis.96

The ‘informality’ in these units refers to the unregistered nature of

these enterprises that are beyond government regulation, unrecorded in official statistics and

unreached by labor and social protection.

The informal economy can be seen on streets, sidewalks and back alleys of cities and

includes petty traders, street vendors, coolies and porters, small-scale artisans, barbers and

shoeshine boys.97

As in most of the developing world, it is the sector that functions as a catch-

basin for people falling into poverty.

Overview of Industrial Relations in Asia

The financial crisis of the 1990s was a major factor in the restructuring of Asia’s industrial

relations systems (IR). For some of these countries, the move toward democratization has been

correlated with an increase in unionization while others moved toward informal economies

where unionization is fragmented. Regardless of the type of restructuring, the state remains the

most powerful actor in Asia’s progression toward more developed industrial relations systems.

IR in Asia is described as underdeveloped and under-institutionalized at present but with the

prediction that the labor movement will be increasingly dynamic in the future.98

The state is

considered the strongest actor in Asian IR systems for maintaining economic development and

stability. State control of IR is strongest where one party has succeeded in remaining in power

for a long period of time and in countries with military and authoritarian regimes where

governments assume a primary role in economic development or in socialist countries

transitioning towards a market economy.99

In a study comparing South Korea, Taiwan and the

Philippines, the IR systems in South Korea and Taiwan are described as examples of state

corporatism while IR in the Philippines, is a rare example of pluralistic industrial relations in

Asia

The countries in which the state retains most control over industrial relations are: Malaysia,

Thailand, Singapore, China, and Vietnam. In Malaysia, trade unions are prohibited from

decision-making at the national level and have little influence at the sectoral level. The

government controls the labor movement by allowing only a small minority of urban workers to

collectively bargain but prohibits negotiation on transfers, promotions, layoffs, and job

assignments. The government of Thailand has historically suppressed the labor movement

despite attempts at democratization in 1992 and 1997. Following the financial crisis the state

adopted a cost-reduction strategy that relies on informal, casual and short-term forms of

employment that have decreased Thailand’s already low union density. Industrial Relations in

Singapore are subordinate to governmental restraints. Union activities such as collective

bargaining and striking are limited by the government. Similarly, China’s Communist

government maintained control over the actions of employees for decades. However, in recent

96

This section is based on J. Sibal, “Measuring the Informal Sector in the Philippines and the Trends in Asia,”

(paper presented at the 10th

National Convention on Statistics, Mandaluyong City, Philippines, 2007), 2-3. 97

“Poverty and the Informal Sector: Role of the Informal Sector in Poverty Reduction.” United Nations

Economic and Social Commissions for Asia and the Pacific, 2006. 98

Dong-One Kim, “Industrial Relations in Asia,” in see Morley, Gunnigle, and Collings, Global Industrial

Relations, 147. 99

This section is based on S.R. De Silva, “Elements in the Shaping of Industrial Relations in Asia.”

International Labour Organization, Bureau of Employers Activities, 6, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogue/

actemp/downloads/publications/srsindus.pdf.

26

years, China has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of labor disputes suggesting that

the government may need to relinquish some control over the labor movement. Finally, toward

the end of the financial crisis, Vietnam enacted the Labour Code in order to promote harmonious

relationships between employers and unions; however, this code is weakly enforced and tends to

be ignored in practice so the government is able to suppress the labor movement.100

Other countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Hong Kong, have more

well established and autonomous industrial relations systems. Although the growth of

employment in the service sector has resulted in decreased union membership, Japan’s

manufacturing sector remains strong and unionized. South Korea’s government suppressed the

development of the labor movement until 1987 when the country moved toward democratization.

Although unionization and labor strife were temporarily stifled by the financial crisis, both have

steadily increased since the late 1990s. Taiwan’s economy is characterized by small, usually

family owned businesses which were more difficult to organize especially since the Labour

Standards Act of 1984 did not provide basic union rights. In the late 1980s, Taiwan experienced

a democratization movement similar to that of South Korea which weakened the government’s

control over unions, allowing them greater autonomy.101

As a result, Taiwan had the highest

union density rates of all the Asian countries – 35.9% - in a 2006 estimate.102

Indonesia has a

long history of union suppression by the government but democratization following the financial

crisis led to a decrease in governmental control over the labor movement and implementation of

ILO conventions in 1998 has correlated with an increase in union density. Finally, Hong Kong

has an underdeveloped industrial relations system where only four percent of the workforce is

covered under collective bargaining agreements but union density in the country has continued to

increase following the financial crisis.103

While the general pattern of industrial relations in Asia is characterized by government

control, in some countries, the role of trade unions has been important determinant of industrial

relations outcomes for example, in India and Sri Lanka, where trade unions were part of the

national independence movements. While the more suppressive governments prohibit all aspects

of unionization, the governments in democratized countries control aspects of collective

bargaining and the right to strike. Many countries also adopted the notion of enterprise unions

rather than industry unions as a means of decentralizing the labor movement104

. In general,

unionization rates are low across Asian countries. Apart from the suppression of independent

labor movements in Asian countries, the increasing informal and rural sectors have affected

union strength particularly in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and the South Asian

countries105

. Similar to Thailand and the Philippines, the majority of wage earners are in

enterprises with only 10 or more workers, limiting their capacity to form unions and collectively

bargain. Globalization has resulted in increased flexibility and informality in the workplace to

benefit the employers.106

Further, globalization has made unionization increasingly difficult for

100

Kim, “Industrial Relations in Asia,” 153-66. 101


Susan Hayter and Valentina Stoevska, “Trade Union Density and Collective Bargaining Coverage:

International Statistical Inquiry 2008-09,” International Labour Organization, 2011, 10. <http://www.ilo.org/

wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_dialogue/---dialogue/documents/genericdocument /wcms_165194.pdf>. 103



De Silva, “Elements in the Shaping of Industrial Relations in Asia,” 10. 106

Kim, “Industrial Relations in Asia,” 169.

27

workers worldwide.107

Although trade unions in Asia tend to have lower rates of union density,

there has been an increase in labor disputes which is contradictory to the trend in many Western

countries.108

Table 2: Informal sector incidence and share of GDP per country in Asia

Country Informal sector as percent of employment Contribution to GDP

(year)

Bangladesh 87.7109

63.59 (2005-2006)110

Cambodia 95.0 81.04 (2003)111

Hong Kong 10.2-10.7 (1990-2008)112

16.6 (1993)113

India 93.0

114 (of the workforce in 1999-2000)

45.8 b (as percent of total employment)

31.6 (1997-1998)115

Indonesia 29.1 a 25.2 (1998)

116

Nepal 73.3 c (1999) 51.47 (2008)

117

Pakistan 64.6 c (1997) 21.2 (1997)

118

Philippines 44.6119

(2002-2007) 25.4 (1995)120

a Informal sector is defined as employment on casual basis and unpaid work. b Estimation by the Delhi Group. c National definition.

Case Studies of Trade Unions and Informal Economy Workers in Asia

India121

Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). The informal economy organizations in

India illustrate the combination of forming cooperative or mutual self-help organizations and

107

N. Ramasamy, “The Future of the Trade Union Movement in Malaysia,” Malaysia Trade Union Congress,

http://www.mtuc.org.my/Nagiah%20The%20Way%20Forward.pdf. 108

Kim, “Industrial Relations in Asia,” 171. 109

D. Maligalig, “Informal Employment in Bangladesh and Indonesia,” Asian Development Bank, http://www.

adb.org/ Documents/Presentations/Gender/Dax-Maligalig-methodology.pdf. 110

Maligalig, “Informal Employment in Bangladesh and Indonesia.” 111

“Private Sector Assessment for the Kingdom of Cambodia,” Asian Development Bank, http://www.adb.org/

Statistics/reta_files/6430/ Bangladesh-Country-Paper.pdf. 112

“Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2011,” Asian Development Bank, http://www.adb.org/Documents/

Books/Key_Indicators/2011/pdf/Key-Indicators-2011.pdf. 113

F. Schneider, “Size and Measurement of the Informal Economy in 110 Countries around the World,” (paper

presented at Workshop of Australian National Tax Centre, ANU, Canberra, Australia, July 17 2002). 114

J. Unni, “Size, Contribution, and Characteristics of Informal Employment in India,” The Gujarat Institute of

Development Research, http://casi.ssc.upenn.edu/system/files/UNNI+India+Case+Study+for+ILO+stats+book. Pdf. 115

Unni, “Size, Contribution and Characteristics.” 116

Maligalig, “Informal Employment in Bangladesh and Indonesia.” 117

R. Suwal, and P. Bishnu, “Measuring Informal Sector Economic Activities in Nepal,” (paper presented at the

IARIW-SAIM Conference, 2009) http://www.iariw.org/papers/2009/7%20Suwal.pdf. 118

“Profile of the Informal Sector,” Congressional Planning and Budget Department, http://www.congress.gov

.ph/download/cpbd/fnf_112008_ profsector.pdf. 119

“Profile of the Informal Sector.” 120

“Profile of the Informal Sector.” 121

This section is based on “HomeNet Bangladesh,” WEIGO, http://www.wiegodatabase.org/index.php?option

=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=11&sobi2Id=246&Itemid=88&lang=en.

28

trade unions to blend the struggle for rights and development. For SEWA, the struggle is against

the restrictions and repression experienced by informal workers in their societies and economies

while development is about strengthening women’s capacity to negotiate new economic

alternatives for themselves. SEWA is the classic example of successful self-organization by poor

self-employed women. SEWA has over one million informal women members, over 100

cooperatives, and is involved in child care services, insurance and other forms of mutual aid.

SEWA’s strategy combines the forms of unions and cooperatives and is founded on the

Ghandian principle of organizing for social change. SEWA is a confluence of three movements,

the labor movement, cooperative movement and the women’s movement.

Similarly, Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP) or the Trade Union of

Waste Pickers based in Pune City, India had about 8,000 members as of 2009, composed mainly

of women waste-pickers and itinerant scrap buyers. The KKPKP organizes and mobilizes waste-

pickers using the twin strategies of peaceful non-violent protest and resistance and development

of alternatives. KKPKP campaigns for decent work for waste collectors, organizes for social

protection such as medical insurance, cooperative credit/saving schemes, etc. and mobilizes

against exploitation of waste-pickers from moneylenders and harassment from government

authorities. KKPKP has also established cooperative scrap stores to provide the waste-pickers

with services and better returns on the sale of scrap. The organization engages local, state and

national governments on their issues and their scrap shop cooperatives strive to integrate the

waste pickers into the local urban solid waste management system. KKPKP is registered as a

union since 1993.

The National Street Vendors of India (NASVI) is the major federation of street vendors in

India responsible for struggling towards the formation of a national policy for street vendors in

the country. NASVI was formed as a network in 1998 and has since registered as a workers

organization in 2003 to represent more than 10 million street vendors in India. At present,

NASVI has over 540 street vendor organizations composed of 3.5 lakh members (or 350,000

persons) engaging the state and municipal authorities towards policy reforms and enforcement of

laws on street vendors. In coalition with many NGOs, community-based organizations and

professionals, NASVI’s goals are to ensure livelihood and social security for members through

policy interventions, building capacity; and setting up financial programs and services such as

credit cooperatives and insurance.122

Indonesia

National Network for Domestic Workers Advocacy / JALA-PRT Indonesia has about 2.5

million domestic workers mostly young women from rural poor communities.123

Domestic

workers in Indonesia are excluded from the labor laws and are vulnerable to abuse and

maltreatment. JALA-PRT is a network NGO made up of many institutions concerned with the

interest of domestic workers. Formed in 2004, JALA-PRT engages the government and local

domestic workers organizations in its advocacy work, legal assistance, research and policy

reforms campaigns towards recognition for domestic workers. Among the programs of JALA-

PRT are policy advocacy; national campaigns on domestic workers law; database and

122

This Section is based on “National Association of Street Vendors in India,” WIEGO, http://wiego.org/wiego/

national-association-street-vendors-india-nasvi. 123

“Protection of Indonesia Domestic Workers: Awareness Raising at National and Local Level,” International

Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/jakarta/whatwedo/eventsandmeetings/WCMS_122355/lang--en/index.htm.

29

information; organizational development; and networking.124

Together with Tunas Mulia

Domestic Workers Union-Indonesia, the two organizations are engaging the Indonesia

government for a national legislation for domestic workers.

Tunas Mulia was organized in 2003 initially as a religious study group of domestic workers

in the Mosques as employers encourage their domestic workers to participate in such activities.

The discussion groups became awareness-raising sessions for domestic workers to become

conscious of the need to demand for recognition and better working conditions. Tunas Mulia

campaigns and mobilizes through art/theatre, newsletter, radio, work communities” using a 3-

pronged strategy by helping workers with work contracts, struggle for recognition as a union and

fight for the national domestic workers law. Members of Tunas Mulia recruit members at parks

or rest places for domestic workers, mosques, employers’ houses and meets once a week. The

organization supports the formation of other domestic workers unions in the other parts of the

country.

Nepal

Nepal Independent Domestic Workers Union (NIDWU).125

The Nepal Independent Domestic

Workers Union was established on February 2007 as a national federation of domestic workers

with 533 registered workers. Today, it has 15 local committees or chapters with more than 1,500

workers organized. NIDWU, through the support of GEFONT, a national trade union center of

Nepal, focuses on the plight of child domestic workers who constitute a majority of the domestic

workers in Kathmandu. NIDWU organizes and campaigns for such key issues as: registration of

all domestic workers under municipal and local development authorities; employment contracts

for domestic workers; minimum wage legislation; work benefits such as medical insurance,

social security, and fixed 8-hour working hours and holidays; family visit vacation twice a year

with transportation provided by the employer; and a prohibition on children below 14-years old

to be employed as domestic workers.

Pakistan

Women and Development Association; Home Based Women Workers Federation, Labour

Education Foundation.126

Home-based work is transient and flexible facilitated by multiple

middle men working for factories, independent manufacturers and/or exporters. There are about

12 million home-based workers (HBWs) in Pakistan. WADA and HBWWF with support from

the Labor Education Foundation (LEF) are seeking to hold the state government accountable for

the protection of millions of home-based workers in Pakistan. The national policy reform

demand envisions making employers pay for social security of HBWs including health

insurance, disability and maternity benefits. WADA and HBWWF engage the government to

provide market alternatives for HBWs, organized reproductive health clinics, address community

issues such as sanitation, sexual harassment, etc., negotiate for higher wages with contractors and

facilitate study sessions for HBWs. WADA and HBWWF also mediate in domestic disputes, and

bring people together to solve problems such as instances of sexual harassment.

124

JALA-PRT: National Network for Domestic Workers Advocacy, www.jala-prt.org. 125

Nepal Independent Domestic Workers Union, http://domesticworkerrights.org/?q=node/11. 126

“Home Based Workers Organizing.”

30

Hong Kong, China

Asian Domestic Workers Network (ADWN), Federation of Asian Domestic Workers Union

(FADWU), International Domestic Workers’ Network (IDWN). Hong Kong, while not a

country, has been an important locus for achieving rights for domestic workers. Hong Kong now

recognizes domestic workers though they are still excluded from the regular minimum wage law.

The Asian Domestic Workers Network (ADWN) was officially formed in 2005 as a result of an

exchange workshop of Asian Domestic Workers in Hong Kong in 2004 organized by the

Committee for Asian Women (CAW). ADWN became the first Asian-based network that links

local adult domestic workers’ organizations. At present, ADWN members are from South Asia,

East Asia and South East Asia. These organizations are mostly domestic workers’ organizations

including societies, trade unions and NGOs. ADWN conducts such activities as capacity-

building, campaigns on DW issues, networking, alliance-building, lobbying and organizational

development.127

The Federation of Asian Domestic Workers Union (FADWU) is a labor

federation of six (6) local and migrant domestic workers unions in Hong Kong including the

local Chinese domestic workers’ union, the Indonesian, Filipinos and Thai domestic workers’

unions in the country. FADWU was formed with the support of the Hong Kong Confederation of

Trade Unions (HKCTU), a major labor organization in Hong Kong and is now a union member

of HKCTU. FADWU’s major strategy is to unite domestic workers from different countries

working in Hong Kong towards a collective struggle for common rights and better working

conditions.128

The International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN) is a network of domestic

workers organizations all over the world coordinating DW organizations from Asia, Europe,

Africa and Latin America. It is a mass-based organization with the intention of promoting the

organizing of domestic workers unions nationally and across regions. Specifically, IDWN aims

to: (1) to bring unions and support organizations into regional networks run by DW

organizations; (2) to campaign for the ratification of ILO’s C189 and use this to

mobilize/organize DWs; (3) highlight the situation of DW and build support for rights,

encourage trade unions to support DW organizing and demands for rights, as a platform for

national legislative changes; (4) encourage and support information exchange and networking

through an active web site.129

Bangladesh

HomeNet, Bangladesh/Bangladesh Homeworkers Women Association (BHWA), Self

Employed Union (SEU), Jatiya Rickshaw Shramik League

HomeNet Bangladesh is a network of home-based workers organizations in Bangladesh

composed of 45 member organizations, 6 micro-credit finance institutions and 5,387 members.

The network together with the BHWA organizes for “social protection, better market access and

national policy for home-based workers through various innovative activities such as trade fairs,

127

This section is based on “Asian Domestic Workers Network (ADWN),” Committee for Asian Women,

http://www.cawinfo.org/asian-domestic-workers-network-adwn/. 128

“Federation of Asian Domestic Workers Union (FADWU),” WIEGO http://www.wiegodatabase.org/index

.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=12&sobi2Id=541&Itemid=88&lang=en 129

“International Domestic Workers’ Network (IDWN),” http://www.wiegodatabase.org/index.php?option

=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=12&sobi2Id=266&Itemid=88&lang=en.

31

workshops, and newsletters.130

The Self-Employed Union (SEU) is a trade union of informal

workers namely vendors, fish-sellers and home-based workers. SEU have more than 2,500

members half of whom are women with an objective to protect the rights of self-employed and

jointly struggle for development and overcome poverty.131

SEU conducts capacity building

education activities; network; advocacy and lobbying for members services and hold regular

discussions with issues of street vendors. The union negotiates and dialogues with the

government on policy issues and demands of street vendors. SEU’s current campaign involve on

the elimination of child labour on the street and protection for child street vendors. The Jatiya

Rickshaw Shramik League is a union of 43,000 transport workers such as rickshaw pullers, truck

drivers, boatmen and taxi drivers. The union negotiates with police commissioners, city mayors

and other municipal authorities to provide licenses for rickshaw, get free medical facilities for its

members, get proper stands/halting places and for local authorities to provide night shelters for

homeless rickshaw pullers. To retain its members, the union fights for their rights and solve their

grievances such as police harassment, facilities, social protection, law and rights and

exploitation. The union recruits by organizing local meetings, distributing publicity materials and

highlighting the union’s achievements.132

Philippines

Samahan at Ugnayan ng mga Manggawgawang Pantahanan sa Philipinas or Association

and Linkages of Domestic Workers in the Philippines (SUMAPI); National Union of

Building and Construction Workers in the Philippines (NUBCW)

SUMAPI, established in 1995, now have 5,000 local domestic worker members in the

Philippines. The organization aims to lead the movement for the protection of domestic workers

especially child DWs and improve the conditions of their lives through organizing and capacity-

building. Among the strategies utilized by SUMAPI to organize domestic workers were to

conduct recreational activities in parks, schools, parishes to brief domestic workers on issues

relating to them. SUMAPI also runs campaigns towards the enactment of a law for domestic

workers and the ratification of ILO’s C189. The organization has key services to recruit

members such as 24-hour hotline numbers, provide legal assistance, recreation, facilitates access

to social security benefits (i.e. health insurance) and education services for domestic workers.133

The NUBCW is an affiliate of the global union Building and Wood Workers International

and formed in 2001. The union emerged from the alliance of five (5) construction workers’

associations in the Philippines to organize trade unions in the construction industry.134

As an

industry union, NUBCW enters into a social dialogue with the Philippine state on policy reforms

particularly on the occupational health and safety (OSH) enforcement; decent wages and better

130

“HomeNet Bangladesh,” WEIGO, <http://www.wiegodatabase.org/index.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2

Task=sobi2Details&catid=11&sobi2Id=246&Itemid=88&lang=en. 131

“Labor at Informal Economy (LAIE); Formerly Self Employed Union (SEU),” WEIGO http://www.wiego

database.org/index.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=10&sobi2Id=385&Itemid=88&lang=en 132

This section is based on “Jatiya Rickshaw Shramik League,” WIEGO, http://www.wiegodatabase.org/

index.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=13&sobi2Id=269&Itemid=88&lang=en. 133

This section is based on “Samhan at Ugnayan ng mga Manggawgawan Pantahanan sa Philipinas or

Association and Linkages of Domestic Workers in the Philippines (SUMAPI),” WEIGO http://www.wiegodatabase.

org/index.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=12&sobi2Id=383&Itemid=88&lang=en. 134

“An Industry of Union Construction Workers,” National Union of Building and Construction Workers, http:/

/nubcw-org08.tripod.com/.

32

working conditions for construction workers; capacity-building and push for the general welfare

of its members. NUBCW is currently organizing construction workers into community-based

unions, firm-based unions, craft-based unions (guilds), and cooperatives.135

Cambodia

Building and Woodworkers Trade Union Federation of Cambodia (BWTUC) Established in

2009 after two major construction workers’ federations merged (the Cambodia Construction

Trade Union Federation (CCTUF) based in Siem Reap and Cambodia Federation of Building

and Woodworkers (CFBW) based in Phnom Penh).136

Due to the nature of precarious

employment among construction workers who are project based, casual, seasonal and temporary,

organizing them presents many challenges. When a construction project ends, workers

commonly return to the rural areas to farm or find other construction jobs in other project sites.

Likewise, majority of construction enterprises are small and project-based. Given Cambodia’s

tragic history, the trade union movement in the country is relatively young. There were trade

unions in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge however little was known about them until 1954-

1979. Between the end of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 until 1990 under the communist

government, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), trade unions or ‘syndicates’ as they

were called, were formed and controlled by the State.137

Independent trade union organizing and

formation did not begin until 1991 under the United Nations-supported peace process which led

to introduction of democracy and human rights movement in the country. After the first national

elections in 1993, various ‘free’ and ‘independent’ trade unions sprung up which coincided with

the transformation of the country’s political system to constitutional monarchy and opening to

free market economic system. Among the strategies that the organization plans to implement to

increase its membership are: (1) community based organizing; (2) firm-based organizing; (3)

providing legal assistance to construction workers; (4) craft-based organizing and (5) capacity-

building education activities. The union is also engaging the Cambodian government on policy

reforms such as improved occupational health and safety standards. The mobile nature of

construction workers in temporary project sites and small-scale construction enterprises are the

challenges in organizing construction workers. Almazan recommended looking at craft-based

labor organizing of skilled workers (or artisans as they are called in Cambodia) as well as

organizing the professionals involved in construction such as the architects and engineers.

Conclusions: comparisons and policy implications

Despite the substantial contribution of the informal economy to the overall economies in

Asia, legislation covering the workers in this sector is scarce. For those organizations struggling

to organize the informal sector, gaining legal protection at the local or state level is one of the

major strategies. SEWA, KKPKP and NASVI in India, HBWWF in Pakistan and the SEU,

BHWA and rickshaw operators in Bangladesh focused their initial struggles at the state for legal

135

E. Arellano, “State of the Working People and Labor Organization Address.” 136

Almazan, “The Cambodian Construction Industry.” 137

Veansa Noun and Melisa Serrano, “Building Unions in Cambodia: History, Challenges, Strategies,”

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Office for Regional Cooperation in Asia, 2010, 20.

33

recognition and continue to engage in efforts to enable informal sector workers to legally operate

free from police harassment and criminalization. The domestic workers in Indonesia (JALA-PRT

and Tunas Mulia) and in the Philippines (SUMAPI) are currently engaging their respective

governments to enact a law recognizing domestic workers and including their labor rights within

the labor codes of these countries. The domestic workers organizations in Indonesia are

supported by trade unions such as the KBSPI (a central federation) and the FSPMI (Indonesian

Metal Federation). The SUMAPI in the Philippines are supported by three labor centers: the

Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL), Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) and the

Federation of Free Workers (FFW).

Access to social protection benefits is the second major issue that informal sector workers

struggle for in their respective countries. Construction workers in the Philippines (NUBCW) and

Cambodia (BWTUC) have discovered that high profile advocacy campaigns and lobbying

around occupational safety and health policies (OSH) is an effective consolidating issue for

workers and the campaign activities inspire workers to organize themselves into unions. Home-

based workers, street vendors and rickshaw operators in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh also

respond strongly to campaigns for health insurance benefits, housing and education. Livelihood,

credit programs, cooperatives and other opportunities for economic development are also

important issues for self-employed workers. On the other hand, for the domestic and construction

workers the enforcement of work contracts and minimum wages would be the crucial issues.

Table 3: Asian Cases

Country Organizations Strategies

India

Self-Employed Women’s

Association (SEWA); KKPKP

(Trade Union of Waste Pickers);

and National Association of Street

Vendors of India (NASVI).

- twin strategy of creating trade unions and cooperatives;

- organization engaged in struggle for rights and economic

development

- negotiate and bargain at the local, state and national

levels of government on permits to operate and coverage

in state laws

- development services such as credit, insurance and other

livelihood programs

- social protection services such as health insurance and

education

Indonesia

National Network for Domestic

Workers Advocacy / JALA-PRT

and Tunas Mulia Domestic

Workers Union in Indonesia

- engages the government in its advocacy work, legal

assistance, research and policy reforms campaigns

towards recognition for domestic workers

- “campaigns and mobilizes through art/theatre,

newsletter, radio, work communities” and demand for

work contracts, recognition as a union and enact the

national DWs law - Recruits members in rest places, parks and mosques

Nepal Nepal Independent Domestic

Workers Union (NIDWU)

- organizes and campaigns for registration of all domestic

workers; enforce employment contracts; establish

minimum wages; social protection, and fixed 8-hour

work hours

Pakistan

WADA - Women and

Development Association;

HBWWF - Home Based Women

Workers Federation; LEF -

Labour Education Foundation

- engages the government to provide market alternatives,

organized reproductive health clinics, address

community issues such as sanitation, sexual harassment,

and negotiate for higher wages with contractors

34

Hong Kong,

China

Asian Domestic Workers

Network (ADWN); Federation of

Asian Domestic Workers Union

(FADWU); International

Domestic Workers’ Network

(IDWN)

- major strategy is to unite domestic workers from

different countries working in Hong Kong towards a

collective struggle for common rights and better working

conditions

- organize and demand for rights, as a platform for

national legislative changes

Bangladesh

HomeNet Bangladesh/Bangladesh

Homeworkers Women

Association (BHWA); Self

Employed Union (SEU); Jatiya

Rickshaw Shramik League

- the unions negotiates with government authorities (i.e.

police commissioners, city mayors) to provide license to

operate for street vendors, rickshaw pullers, get free

medical facilities, proper stands/halting places and other

services (i.e. night shelters for homeless rickshaw

pullers)

Philippines

Samahan at Ugnayan ng mga

Manggawgawang Pantahanan sa

Philipinas or Association and

Linkages of Domestic Workers in

the Philippines (SUMAPI);

National Union of Building and

Construction Workers in the

Philippines (NUBCW)

- key services to recruit members such as 24-hour hotline

numbers, legal assistance, recreation, access to social

security benefits (i.e. health insurance) and education

services

- organize into community-based unions, firm-based

unions, craft-based unions (guilds), and cooperatives

Cambodia Building and Woodworkers Trade

Union Federation of Cambodia

(BWTUC)

- community based organizing; firm-based organizing;

providing legal assistance to construction workers; and

capacity-building education activities

Non-government organizations or civil society groups are also major key actors in forming

mass-based organizations in the informal sector. In sectors peopled by street vendors, domestic

workers and home-based workers (i.e. Streetnet, Homenet, Jala-PRT, SUMAPI, etc.), NGOs

play a prominent role in establishing trade unions or workers organizations. In construction and

transport sectors, trade unions are more involved in organizing workers such as the BWI in

Cambodia’s BWTUC and ITF in the Rickshaw League in Bangladesh. NGOs and other civil

society groups working in the communities are supporting the informal workers in terms of

addressing their concerns such as housing, health issues, police harassment, etc.

While presently there is a broadening of NGO-trade union alliances in organizing informal

sector workers, this has not been the case in the past. Previously, unionists did not consider self-

employed or informal employees workers, so these workers were not targeted for unionization.138

SEWA waited years before its application was accepted as a trade union member in the

International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). The home-based workers federations in

Pakistan and Bangladesh are still not part of any trade union confederation nor are the domestic

workers in the Philippines (SUMAPI) and Indonesia (Tunas Mulia). However, trade union-

NGO/civil society cooperation on the issues of informal sector workers organizing has been

strengthened through the years. The International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN) and Asia

Domestic Workers Network (ADWN) strongly supported by the global union, IUF (International

Union of Foods) in Asia are most often at the center of the trade union-NGO joint actions and

events especially during the advocacy for the adoption of the ILO Convention for domestic

workers (C189) in 2011.

138

C. Bonner and D. Spooner, “Organizing in the Informal Sector: A Challenge for Trade Unions,” IPG, http://

library.fes.de/pdf-files/ipg/2011-2/08_a_bonner.pdf.

35

In terms of organizing strategies, the modes of organizing have been adjusted to the nature of

work and demographic of the informal sector. For the home-based workers, community-based

workers organizations focused on addressing workers’ rights and representation coupled with

economic development programs seem to be the common thread among the labor strategies of

SEWA and KKPKP in India, HBWWF in Pakistan, BHWA, SEU and Jatiya in Bangladesh.

Formation of network worker organizations become the starting point for domestic workers in

Hong Kong, the Philippines and Indonesia while NIDWU begin as a trade union affiliated with

GEFONT (a major labor center in Nepal) but all work closely with trade unions in these

countries on their struggles for DW legislations, minimum wages and work contracts. As

domestic workers work in individual households, common rest places such as parks or religious

sites are the places of organizing where domestic workers spend their day-offs. Construction

workers in Cambodia and the Philippines are directly formed into unions with the support of the

global union BWI (Building and Woodworkers International) struggling to negotiate collective

bargaining agreements and national policies on occupational safety and health. Street vendors in

India (NASVI) and Bangladesh (Homenet Bangladesh and BHWA) are affiliated with informal

sector networks and alliances such as the Streetnet and WIEGO. Construction workers and street

vendors most often have mobile workplaces such that mobile organizing of these workers is also

commonly being used by unions and NGOs. The system of getting employed in construction

projects in Cambodia as well as in the Philippines is the presence of one skilled construction

worker recruiting 10-20 workers under him for a specific project. The relationship is commonly

“patron-client” wherein the workers gravitate towards this leader for jobs or projects. In the

Philippines, this is called the “cabo-system” wherein a skilled construction worker brings in his

men towards a particular construction project or firm. Their relationship may last for years or just

a few projects.

It is therefore important to study the nature of the sub-sectors in the informal economy to

adjust labor organizing strategies. The nature of work as well as worksites are not as defined

compared to workers in the formal sector where trade unions can organize within a defined

workplace or factory. Employer-employee relationship is also difficult to establish in the

informal sector making it difficult to enforce the traditional collective bargaining process. And

finally, labor laws are still lacking in many parts of the developing world that covers the labor

relations of workers in the informal sector. It is on this note that labor organizing in the informal

sector need to be informed on the different employment patterns as well as rethinking concepts

of workplace and employment relationship in the informal economy.

Trade Unions Organizing the Informal Economy Workers in Latin America

Gilma Madrid Berroterán

Introduction139

This section explores trade unions’ (TUs) initiatives to tackle the impact of the expansion of

the informal economy (IE) in Latin America (LA). Since the 1980s, TUs have warned about the

impact of neo-liberal policies in different countries in LA in particular the massive flow of

139

Except as otherwise noted this introductory section is based on Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union

Rights, http://survey.ituc-csi.org/Americas-Global.html?lang=en.

36

imported goods into the countries resulting in increasing de-industrialization and a subsequent

decrease in the offer of formal employment.140

TU initiatives in IE are centered around the

construction of a two-dimensional educational strategy: capacity building and professional

training.141

. This chapter focuses on three countries, Guatemala, Colombia and Mexico. These

countries share a history of social, cultural and economic violence against the poor and

marginalized people, expressed mainly through the persecution of NGO members, trade

unionists and community leaders.142

In 2010, the Americas continued to be cited as the most

dangerous continent for the exercise of trade union rights. For example 45 of the 75 people killed

for seeking to exercise basic workers´ rights occurred in Colombia alone (three of which were

women and 16 trade union leaders). Another twenty trade union activists escaped attacks. In

Guatemala where an anti-trade union culture implemented by employers is tolerated by the State,

ten people were murdered, two people escaped death and five others received death threats. This

climate of violence is fueled by an underlying culture in which the majority of trade union

organizations were victims of smear campaigns, infiltration, parallelism and exclusion from all

forms of political and social inclusion.

In Mexico, suppression of workers’ rights to freedom of association is endemic and takes a

variety of forms, most especially the so-called “protection contracts” (contratos de protección) .

These are agreements between employers and employer-dominated unions with minimal

protection for or involvement of the workers covered by the contract and which function to

repress workers’ efforts to form independent unions.143

Employers’ interests are also enforced

through the use of force aimed at suppressing workers for democratic trade unions with no

consequence from and sometimes the assistance of the government. Two unions in particular

have been targeted based on their efforts to advance the goals of freedom of association:

Mexican Miners’ and Metalworkers’ Union (SNTMMSRM) and the Mexican Electrical

Workers’ Union (SME).

The Annual Survey makes clear that suppression of workers’ rights against workers is not

only particular to Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico but on the Continent as a whole with the

notable exceptions such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. Employers use a wide variety

of tactics to repress the main expressions of freedom of association (forming trade unions,

collective bargaining or strikes) including arbitrary dismissals, discrimination and anti-trade

union campaigns. In many Latin American countries collective bargaining rights are limited not

only due to employer resistance but also due to a paucity of binding legal measures. There are

still few countries where governments have implement genuine measures to encourage free and

open collective bargaining.

As a result of the serious repression of workers’ rights to form or join unions, countries in the

Americas have developed practices expressly aimed at by-passing labor rights. These practices

include protection contracts (Mexico) or the use of contract or temporary workers (Colombia,

Honduras among others). The economic crisis is consistently used as a pretext to undermine

trade union and workers’ rights. Therefore, as will be discussed further below, violence is a

significant factor in the growth of the IE, which in turn is one of the many challenges facing

140

Emilio Klein, “Los Sindicatos y el Sector Informal,” Nueva Sociedad 70 (1984): 95-101. 141

Gerardo Castillo, Miguel Frohlich, and Alvaro Orsatti, “Construccion de una estrategia Formativa Integral

Hacia los Trabajadores de la Economía Informal, serie Sindicatos y Formacion, CIOLS/ORIT” 2005. 142

Amnesty International Country Reports 2000-2010, http://www.amnesty.org/. 143

See for example “Mexican Government must Answer Case on Protection Contracts,” International

Metalworkers’ Federation-IMF, http://www.imfmetal.org/index.cfm?c=22603

http://survey.ituc-csi.org/glossary.html#267

37

trade union organizations in this region. At the same time, violence against trade unionists, NGO

members and community leaders is one the obstacles for trade union organization itself.

This culture of violence against trade union members and supporters is enabled and

supported by a public discourse that is characterized by violent rhetoric in the media in which the

exercise of basic freedom of association rights is devalued and even criminalized. This discourse

often accuses unions of corruption or association with insurgent political factions and asserts

defending workers’ rights is an impediment to industrial progress and modernization.144

These

campaigns function in two-ways: as smear campaigns to curtail public support for trade union

activists and also to some extent, to legitimize the violent attacks on trade union activists.

The three case study countries, Guatemala, Colombia and Mexico have had right-wing

governments in power for decades that have sought maintain the status quo. It is against this

background of repression, therefore, that we explore the strategies that TUs are implementing to

organize workers in both the formal sector but also, and sometimes even more dangerous, those

in the informal economy.

Trade Unions and Informal Economy Workers in Latin America145

It was not until fifteen years after initial definition of informality was presented at the

beginning of the 1970s that it was incorporated to the Inter-American Regional Workers'

Organization (ORIT), the Latin American region of the International Confederation of Free

Trade Unions, now the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). In the 1990s the XV

ICFTU Congress approved the resolution “Strategies to the Integration of marginalized workers”

which recognized the existence of marginalized laborers, a problem common to all LA countries,

as a result of labor de-regularization, employment crises and the implementation of structural

adjustment Program (SAPs). The resolution signaled that there were common elements to the

conditions of workers: socially isolated, underpaid, unrecognized, exploited, subjected to the

worst and most dangerous working conditions, without benefiting from social welfare, and

without protection against dismissal or other means to defend their interests. This view also

incorporated child labor as a critical characteristic of informality.

As part of its strategy to engage dependent workers in general, ORIT focused its work in the

IE mostly on heads of families and single salaried workers with low income, through a line of

work concentrated on dependent workers in precarious work. This line of work continued the

historical work that trade unions had done in LA. Beginning in the 1950s there are examples of

informal workers’ trade unions in such trades as construction workers, barbers, shoe polishers

and seamstresses in Guatemala and in Colombia. In the trade union base of Colombia, Untracut

(Union Nacional de la Central Unitaria de Trabajadores) eventually to become the Central

Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), informal workers accounted for more than 80% of affiliates.

ORIT continued its work developing internal and external strategies. Internal strategies, for

example, contemplated assessments of the socio-economic characteristics of the IE in each

country, creation of working commissions on the subject and education activities with their base

members to sensitize formal workers and the general public; external strategies focused on the

struggle to integrate IE work into the formal economy with the goal of the total elimination of

the IE. ORIT has also promoted the debate around the term informal work because it created

confusion among workers who considered this term as synonymous with irresponsibility and

144

Gilma Madrid, “Working With Flowers: An Analysis of Social, Cultural, and Ethical Relations in Colombia

and the U.K.” (PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003). 145

This section is based on Castillo, Frohlich and Orsatti, “Construccion de una estrategia Formativa Integral.”

38

lack seriousness. In the seminars promoted by ORIT, the workers explained the need and

convenience to use other terms such as “independent work”, “private work”, “own-

employment,” “autonomous,” “under-employed” and even micro-entrepreneur.

In 2006 the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions merged with the World

Confederation of Labor (WLC) to create the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

In 2008 the Americas’ regional organization was changed from ORIT to the Trade Union

Confederation of the Americas (TUCA). At its founding congress TUCA resolved that internal

trade union reform (“auto-reforma”) would be a regional priority, highlighting the need to create

a culture of organizing workers in diverse, representative unions that include all workers

regardless of the increasingly precarious, temporary and indirect terms under which they are

hired. For many unions, the process of auto-reform has included efforts at integrating informal

sector workers.

The Informal Economy in Latin America146

Although generally working in the informal economy is contrasted negatively with working

in the formal sector, the reality is more complex process which has different impacts in different

economic sectors such as manufacturing, commerce and services. This is because there is a

heterogeneous range of actors involved, in terms of economic activities and level of income. The

informal economy is considered as an alternative to gain an income, especially for the poorest

population with less possibilities of integrating into the formal sector. It is seen sometimes as an

alternative for improving the family income given that the majority of the poor populations are

self-employed or working in small units. However, given the fact that these families tend to

remain in poverty, informal economy work often does not yield sufficient income for families to

raise their living standard above the poverty level and is therefore remains, for many, more a

survival tool than a strategy to overcome poverty.

Further, starting a business is a costly and a time consuming barrier to people with low

incomes who lack the resources to navigate the often cumbersome process of obtaining permits

and registration and licensing rules. Lack of credit for small and medium companies is another

obstacle to creating formal sector type jobs therefore excluding this type of employment for a

large part of the population.

In the 1980s the informal economy grew in parallel to the escalating Latin American

financial crisis and by the 1990s globalisation did not the promised higher employment rates or

better welfare for the Latin American population.147

According to the data shown in Table 4, at

the end of the 1990s, the percentage of population working in IE almost tripled in some countries

such as Argentina, Brazil and Costa Rica compared to the 1980s. Other countries such as

Mexico, Peru and Ecuador almost doubled or substantially increased these figures. However, the

data also shows a slight decrease a decade later, suggesting that although foreign investment,

especially from European and Asian countries, has increased dramatically in the region (40% in

146

This section is based on Sara Ochoa Leon, “Economia Informal: Evolución reciente y perspectivas,” Centro

de Estudios Sociales y de Opinión Publica, 2010. 147

Lucia Rosales, “Reseña Sobre La Economia Informal Y Su Organización En America Latina,” Global

Labour Institute, http://www.globallabour.info/es/2009/03/la_economia_informal_y_su_ orga.html.

39

2010148

and 54% in 2011149

), this investment has not “trickled down”- to bring reduced poverty

and inequality or increased formal employment.

According to the ILO 2011 Labor Overview, the analysis of data from 16 countries shows

that 50 out of every hundred people in Latin America work in the informal sector. For Latin

America as a whole, 33% are employed in the informal economy, 12% have informal

employment within the formal sector, and 5% work as in domestics.150

Another factor contributing to the increasing population working in the informal economy is

the increase of people either forcibly displaced internally or refugees from other countries. After

Sudan, Colombia has the largest proportion of the population internally displaced in the world151

with 5,195.620 people forcibly displaced in the last 25 years (1985-2010).152

According to

official data, 51% of the total of the population on forced displacement had to abandon their land

during the eight years of the past government (2002-2010).

In Mexico a report by Parametria shows that between 2010 and 2011, more than 120,000

were forcibly displaced by the violence throughout the country from Ciudad Juárez, Zacatecas

and Cancún, among others.153

Data from other sources are higher and estimate that the number of

people at risk of displacement is increasing.154

Guatemala has also coped with the effects of internal displacement since the 1980s when,

due to the civil war, thousands of people, mainly peasant and indigenous people, were forcibly

displaced from their ancestral lands. Even when the government signed a Human Rights

Agreement to assist and economically compensate the victims, this agreement has not being

honored and several thousand victims are in a precarious social and economic situation.155

148

“Latin America and the Caribbean was the Region Where Most Foreign Direct Investment Grew in 2010,”

CEPAL, http://www.eclac.cl/cgibin/getProd.asp?xml=/prensa/noticias/comunicados/7/43307/P43307.xml&xsl=/

prensa/tpl/p6f.xsl&base=/tpl/top-bottom.xsl. 149

“FDI Increases 54% in First Half of 2011 in the Region,” CEPAL, http://www.eclac.cl/cgi-

bin/getProd.asp?xml=/prensa/noticias/comunicados/9/44869/P44869.xml&xsl=/prensa/tpl/p6f.xsl&base=/tpl/top-

bottom.xsl. 150

“Organizacion Internacional del Trabajo,” ILO. 151

Gutiérrez Aguilar and Angelica Lucia, “Marco Teórico y Aspectos Generales Relativos al Fenómeno de

Desplazamiento Interno Forzoso.” 152

“¿Consolidacion de que? Informe sobre Desplazamiento, Conflicto Armado y Derechos Humanos en 2010,”

Consultorio para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento, CODHES, 2011. 153

“Mexico y sus Desplazados,” Parametria, www.internaldisplacement.org/.../DesplazadosOK. pdf. 154

“México: Desplazamiento Forzado, Silencioso y no Reconocido,” Radio Nederland, http://www.rnw.nl/

espanol/article/m%C3%A9xico-desplazamiento-forzado-silencioso-y-no-reconocido. 155

Asociación Consejo Nacional De Desplazados De Guatemala Condeg, http://www.cnoc.org.gt/ condeg.html.

40

Table 4: Population working in the Informal Economy (% of the labor force)

Country 1984156

% 1999157

% 2008158

% 2010159

%

Argentina 15 42,4 N/A 46,7

Brazil 15 47,4 42 42,1

Colombia 59,6

Costa Rica 15 41,6 37,1 43,8

Mexico 30 43,7 54,2

Peru 30 64,1 59,3 70,3

Ecuador 30 58,9 57,4 56,4

Types of Informal Economy Work in Latin America

Appendix 1, compiled with information from WIEGO database, ILO data and ITUC data, shows

the following sectors of informal economy work represented by TUs in different countries in

LA: domestic workers, waste collectors, taxi and bus drivers, street vendors, food vendors,

agricultural workers, home-based workers, photographers, cleaners, street-market vendors,

artisans, shoe and car cleaners, florists, kiosk vendors, lottery tickets vendors, cosmetic vendors,

catalogue vendors, electrician, plumbers, salon vendors, sex workers, and many more types of

work. The cases summarized in Appendix 1 show some of the main trade unions from different

sectors of the IE. This is by no means a comprehensive summary of all Latin American trade

unions organizing the workers in the IE.

The data show that domestic workers trade unions (DWTU) predominate. Currently, there

are 7.6 million people employed as domestic workers in LA, constituting an average of 5.5 per

cent of total urban employment.160

Domestic workers are primarily women though there is also a

small percentage of men from lower income households. Many are migrants from the forcibly

displaced population described above - originally coming from the rural areas of their own

country, but more recently from foreign countries, generally, but not only, neighboring

countries.161

In CostaRica, Chile and Argentina between 16 to 21 percent of domestic workers

are migrants.162

156

Klein, “Los Sindicatos y el Sector Informal.” 157

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), http://www.beta.undp.org/undp/en/home. html. 158

United Nations Development Programme. 159

Organizacion Internacional del Trabajo (OIT), http://www.oit.org.pe/. 160

Victor E. Tokman, “Domestic Workers in Latin America: Statistics for new Policies,” (paper for

International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied

Workers’ Associations and Women Informal Economy: Globalizing and Organizing, 2010). 161

Tokman, “Domestic Workers in Latin America.” 162

Tokman, “Domestic Workers in Latin America.”

41

One of the main focuses of domestic worker’ trade unions’ (DWTU) effort is to obtain basic

“standard” employment terms: work contracts, wages, pensions and health insurance. Out of all

the DWTUs listed in Appendix 1, the Federacion Nacional de Trabajadoras del Hogar de Bolivia

(FENATRAHOB) (National Federation of Bolivian Domestic Workers) has succeeded in

securing a new law that regulates working conditions for domestic workers, including social

security, breaks for breastfeeding, health coverage, vacation time and an 8 hour working day. It

has created a support organization (CCTH) which acts as a lobbying and vocational training

center. In Costa Rica, an NGO, Asociación de Trabajadoras Domésticas (Astradomes) (Domestic

Workers Association), played a major role in obtaining specific legislation in 2009 for domestic

workers that includes an 8 hour day and one weekly day of rest. In 2011 Domestic Workers

unions in the Dominican Republic advanced a law that would provide domestic workers with

access to social security. At the time of this writing the law has yet to be ratified.

In Peru the Instituto de Promoción y Formación de Trabajadoras del Hogar (IPROFOTH)

(Domestic Workers Capacity Building Institute) has created the first national union of domestic

workers that assists with organizing, training and running projects. The Institute also struggles

for changes to labor laws, and was successful in having domestic labor covered by labor law in

2003.

Street vending is seen in many cases in Latin America as a “temporary” survival strategy,

especially for women, men and children who have been forcibly displaced from their homes and

land.163

This survival strategy, is known as “rebusque” – which means “whatever it takes to

survive.” Meertens differentiates the living situation between the “historical poor” and the newer

forcibly displaced people and argues that among the latter, men are particularly disadvantaged

because of their rural background where their skills are linked to traditional rural male jobs such

as cattle raising, agriculture, etc. which have little value in the urban labor markets where they

seek refuge. Women, however, develop skills that are more transferable to the work in the cities

such as domestic work, cleaning, child and elder care and cooking. 70% of displaced people

come from the rural areas, the other 30% from urban areas, where they might have more access

to other type of skills such as shopkeepers, teachers, chauffeurs, hairdressers etc. People from the

urban areas tend to find work more easily than those with an exclusively rural background. For

the latter, arrival in the city means a big change in both occupational and, relatedly, gender

roles.164

Street vending is taken up, therefore, as a “temporary” survival strategy by people who

have been displaced but the “temporary” character in many cases turns to be permanent.

In Colombia there are contradictory policies and regulations concerning street vendors. One

is the “legalization” and “relocation” approach taken by different municipal administrations in

Bogota in the 1990s. The 1998 Acuerdo 6 adopted the Economic, Social and Public Works

Development Plan 1998–2001,165

through which the local administrations wanted to massively

displace street vendors in order to “free” and “recuperate” urban space in Bogotá. Street vendors

and support organizations along with some trade unions, such as Unión General de Trabajadores

Independientes y de la Economía Informal, UGT, opposed the forced relocation through public

awareness campaigns and filed a Lawsuit against the municipality, signed by 1,016 street

163

Donny, Meertens, (2003) “Forced Displacement in Colombia: Public Policy, Gender and Initiatives for

Reconstruction,” (paper presented at the Conference on African Migration in Comparative Perspective,

Johannesburg, South Africa, June 4-7 2001). 164

Meertens, “Forced Displacement in Columbia.” 165

The following section is based on Simanca, Castillo, and Orielly, “Fondo De Ventas Populares 1972-2006,”

Alcaldia Mayor de Bogotá, 2008.

42

vendors from different locations in the city. The Constitutional Court (CC) ruled that although

public space prevailed over private interest, the municipality was obliged to relocate those street

vendors with whom the municipality had previous agreements and had to offer them a capacity

building program, advice on the procurement of low-interest loans and any other strategy that the

municipality had previously negotiated with the street vendor’s organizations. According to the

ruling of the court, the municipality had to reformulate its policies and strategies for the street

vendor sector. The Fondo de Ventas Populares (FVP) had to redesign its program with the goal

of incorporating street vendors into the city´s formal economy through the implementation of

professional advice, credits, and capacity building.

Another important event was CC ruling T-772 in which the court recognized the violation of

several rights of a street vendor by the police: (rights to human dignity, equality, free personal

development, freedom from displacement, freedom to choose profession and craft, and personal

freedom). This ruling informed the actions and program of the municipality and has enhanced

the bargaining power of the street vendors and their representatives in negotiations about public

space.

Apart from trade unions there are several other types of organizations representing or

advocating for informal workers such as associations, foundations, NGOs, federations, and

committees. From the 130 types of worker organization listed in WIEGO’s database, 43 are

trade union-oriented (33% of the total). They could be informal trade unions with affiliation to

the national chapters or formal trade unions working within the informal sector. Trade unions are

affiliated to their national chapters in each country and those in turn form continental federations

such as: Confederacion Latinoamericana de Trabajadoras del Hogar (CONLACTRAHO), Red de

Sindicatos de La Economia Informal de Centroamerica y Panamá (SEICAP), Red de

Trabajadoras Sexuales (REDTRASEX) and Red Latinoamericana de Organizaciones de

Recicladores (RLOR).

Main Trade Unions organizing Informal Economy Workers in Guatemala, Colombia

and Mexico166

Guatemala

La Confederacion de Union Sindical de Guatemala (CUSG) formed the Federación de

Unidad Sindical de la Economía Informal de Guatemala, which includes seven sectoral trade

unions (cycle taxis, taxi drivers, traders, market vendors, middle men) with a total of 1500

members. The Union Sindical de Trabajadores de Guatemala (UNSITRAGUA) organizes

informal workers from the rural areas in the whole country with emphasis on the border with

Mexico. The union was formed in 1985 to restructure the trade union movement, which had been

subjected to a campaign of terror by the government against grass-root organizations. The union

adopted horizontal decision making processes to guarantee the democratic nature of the

organization.167

166

The following sections are based on Guillermo Perez Herrera, “Orit–Ciosl: Experiencia De Organización

Sindical En La Economia Informal,” Programa Sindical de la Economía Informal CIOSL-OIRT,

www.oit.org.pe/spanish/260ameri/oitreg/activid/proyectos/actrav/proyectos/ppt/orit1.ppt; and WIEGO (see page 9

for full citation). 167

“Trade Union of Workers of Guatemala,” UNSITRAGUA, http://unsitraguahistoricagt. org/index.php.

43

The Central General de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CGTG) jointly with the Movimiento de

Trabajdoras y Trabajadores de Campesinos de San Marcos (MTC) and UNSITRAGUA, formed

the Movimiento Sindical y Popular Autonomo (The Popular and Independent Trade Union

Movement). The Movement has two main campaigns, one to advocate for social and economic

rights for young people and the other around decent jobs (“decent jobs: yes!”). The campaign

activities include, among others, seminars about decent work, leaflets, and awareness raising

walks.168

The CGTG also offers assistance with trade union organization, capacity building,

finances, legal aid, human rights, and health services including a medical clinic, pharmacy,

dental care and laboratory.

Colombia

The Escuela Nacionál Sindicál (ENS) (the National Trade Union School) has argued in

several reports that the majority of human rights violations against trade unionists in Colombia

are linked to labor conflicts, even when they occur in the middle of the civil war and when they

are committed, in the majority of the cases, by actors in the armed conflict. The ENS has also

pointed out that the majority of murders, death threats, kidnappings and forced displacement of

workers have occurred during periods when workers and unions seek greater exercise of their

rights. This implies that Colombian trade unionists are not collateral or casual victims of the

armed conflict; rather, suppressing labor rights appears to be part of the combatants strategy.169

The Confederación de Trabajadores Colombianos (CTC) works with 71 trade unions and

seven federations in the IE (FETRALNA, FETRANDES, FEDETRAL, FESTRATOL,

FESTRALVA, FETRABOL, FEDETRAR), comprising 5000 workers in the country.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the Central Unitaria de los Trabajadores (CUT) promoted

work with 100 organizations and 12,000 members nationwide through the Federacion Nacional

de Profesionales y Trabajadores de los Gremios Independientes de Colombia (FENGRICOL).

The CUT has also founded the Casa de la Mujer Trabajadora (the Women Workers’ Home),

which focuses on the IE and women´s unemployment generally. One of its main activities is a

program of assistance for creating productive businesses for women.

The Confederacion General de Trabajadores Democraticos (CGT) struggles for the abolition

of child labor in the short, medium and long term. The CGT also lobbies for protective labor

legislation and government programs to increase employment and social security, improve the

quality of life, and reduce poverty.170

The strategy is based on organizing meetings and

workshops to promote employment generation and favorable legislation for the independent

worker in the informal sector.

Mexico

Like Colombia, Mexican unions are the target of violence and there are serious violations of

the freedom of workers to organize.171

The International Tribunal on Trade Union Freedom

168

“Jovenes sindicalistas por el Tarbajo Decente en Guatemala,” UNI Global Union,

http://www.uniglobalunion.org/Apps/UNINews.nsf/vwLkpById/9E9D7CD79AF3ACFDC1257925006724CB. 169

“Colombia,” Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights, http://survey07.ituccsi.org/get

country.php?IDCountry=COL&IDLang=ES. 170

The following section is based on WIEGO. 171

“Deterioration of the Trade Union Rights Situation in Mexico,” International Metalworkers Federation,

http://www.imfmetal.org/index.cfm?c=26495&l=2.

44

argues that the violence against workers' organizations in Mexico is being promoted in various

ways by the Mexican government itself and the tribunal demands an end to this state of affairs.

The main trade union activity in the IE in Mexico is located in the Confederación

Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos (CROC), which in 1982 created the Federación

Nacional de Organizaciones de Trabajadores No Asalariados (FNOTNA or the National

Federation of Organizations of Workers Not Employees). The Federacion has developed a

multi-pronged strategy in different fields. The Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) organizes

workers in the IE in the north of Mexico and some vendors and artisans in the capital city.

Conclusions and Policy Implications

Out of the three countries that comprise the cases studies of this chapter, two are engulfed in

internal armed conflict and the third, Guatemala, was devastated by a civil war in the 1980s.

People in the three countries have been victims of forced displacement and other human rights

violations by the paramilitaries and other armed actors.172

The situation is precarious in

Colombia and in Mexico is worsening every day. Internally displaced people find most of their

survival strategies within the informal economy and the deterioration of the human rights

situation in Latin America corresponds with the increased percentage of the population

depending on the informal economy for their survival.

The strong connection between displacement and informalization presents certain challenges

to organizations working with or for IE workers. In polarized countries divided by mistrust, these

organizations themselves tend to have a high degree of volatility.173

The work of trade unions

and other related organizations in the context of internal conflict, targeted violence,

discriminatory discourses, and lack of support from the government is dangerous and requires

the support of their international affiliates or other international organizations and the general

public in countries in the North. Nonetheless, there are clear examples where informal economy

worker have successfully formed or joined unions to advance their rights. For example the

Federacion Nacional de Trabajadoras del Hogar de Bolivia’s success in securing a new legal

basis for domestic workers.

It is important to note that the majority of the TUs listed in Appendix 1 working within the IE

focus their activities in cities. There is still the need to further support organizing work by TUs or

other labor organizations, to reach the rural areas.

NORTH AMERICA: UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Adrienne E. Eaton, Susan J. Schurman and Camille Dileo

The industrial relations systems of the United States and Canada are similar in many ways.

The basic model in both countries consists of six elements: employee choice; majoritarianism;

decentralization; exclusive representation; bargaining power; written legally enforceable

collective bargaining agreements; and administration by a specialized government agency. The

legal framework for private sector labor relations in the U.S. was established in 1935 with the 172

Fidel Mignorance, “The Flow of Palm Oil Colombia – Belgium/Europe: A Study from a Human Rights

Perspective,” HRE – CBC, 2006. 173

Meertens, “Forced Displacement in Columbia.”

45

enactment of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The NLRA applies to industrial

relations in all private sector firms that affect interstate commerce except firms in railways,

airlines, and agriculture. Employees working in the railway and airline industries are covered by

the Railway Labor Act (RLA). The development of industrial relations in the United States

prompted the establishment of an industrial relations system in Canada, and in 1948, “The

federal government in Canada used the NLRA as the model for labor legislation covering

employees in interprovincial industries.” While the United States has national labor legislation,

Canada utilizes national legislation for interprovincial industries, such as airline and

telecommunication, but each province adopts its own legislation for industries that are not

interprovincial.

In both countries, a majority vote of employees in a pre-determined workgroup in favor of

union representation will result in certification of the union. This legal framework favors

worksite organizing and decentralized collective bargaining. In both countries, there is little

government intervention in the bargaining process following certification; thus outcomes are

determined by the parties’ bargaining power and the strategic use of industrial conflict (strikes

and lockouts). Each country also has a specialized agency to enforce the law. In the United

States, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) governs employees covered by the NLRA.

The Canadian Industrial Relations Board applies to interprovincial industries while provincial

labor laws are regulated separately by each province’s industrial labor relations board.174

As in most of the world, union density in the United States and Canada has substantially

declined: according to 2010 data, union membership in the United States is now estimated at

11.9% of the workforce and 30.8% in Canada. Both countries have major deficiencies in the

coverage of their labor (and employment) laws. For instance, the NLRA applies only to certain

private sector employees; it does not apply to workers covered by the RLA, domestic workers,

agricultural workers, domestic employees, local/state/federal government employees or

independent contractors.175

In 2002, the US GAO176

estimated, using 1997 data, that 22% of

private sector workers were excluded from the protections of the NLRA. Breaking down that

gross estimate further, the GAO concluded that supervisors or managers accounted for 9%,

independent contractors 7%, small business (too small to be covered) 5%, agricultural workers

.5%, and domestic workers .3%. (The GAO also estimated that 34% of public sector workers

are without bargaining rights, largely a result of entire states prohibiting or not protecting

collective bargaining; this number would be higher today as a result of legislative changes in

2011.) Temporary agency workers are covered but complications arise in determining who the

employer is and the law in this area is unsettled. There are similar coverage issues in the laws

that protect individual rights. For instance, the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets the national

minimum wage and regulates overtime and child labor also covers employer (and employees) in

interstate commerce and excludes self-employed/independent contractors, agricultural workers,

and some home-based workers. (Administrative, professional and managerial workers are also

excluded from the overtime protections of the law.) Despite gradual expansion in coverage over

174

This overview is based on Richard N. Block, "Industrial Relations in the United States and Canada," in

Global Industrial Relations, ed. Michael Morley, Patrick Gunnigle, and David G. Collings (London: Routledge,

2006), 25-52. 175

“National Labor Relations Act,” National Labor Relations Board, http://www.nlrb.gov/national-labor-

relations-act. 176

“Collective Bargaining Rights: Information on the Number of Workers with and Without Bargaining

Rights,” U.S. General Accounting Office, Sep. 2002, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02835.pdf.

46

the decades since it was originally enacted, a 1996 estimate suggested only 65% of all (private

and public sector) U.S. workers were covered at least in part.177

As described above, Canadian labor and employment law is more complex, at least in the

private sector, than U.S. law given the split in jurisdiction between national and provincial law.

In terms of coverage of particular types of workers, however, the labor laws generally share

similar shortcomings in their treatment of independent contractors, some home-based workers

and some agricultural workers. On the other hand, most Canada labor laws offer a broader

definition of employee including someone in what is termed “dependent contractor status”. The

dependent contractor concept has broadened the scope of coverage, exactly how broad depends

on how the particular labor board has defined it. There are also, at the national level and in some

provinces, Status of the Artist acts which establish a framework for collective bargaining in an

industry which is characterized by informal work (and discussed in more detail below).

Extent of Informal and Non-standard work

Table 5 summarizes basic statistics on the extent of informal or non-standard work in Canada

and the U.S. Estimates of the extent of the informal economy are notoriously difficult to come

by and unreliable. Nonetheless, most estimates coalesce in the way described in the Table 5 with

the U.S. at about 10% or a little lower and Canada somewhat higher. This higher degree of

Canadian informality is closely related to the degree of self-employment, a major source in any

country of informal work. It should be noted that aside from involuntary part time work, the

U.S. government does not track other forms of non-standard work regularly and has not done so

since 2005. We know that the level of involuntary part time work in the U.S. roughly doubled as

a result of the ongoing economic turndown; it is probably safe to assume the levels of other non-

standard work have similarly gone up. It is important to note that, in keeping with the generally

low level of labor market regulation in the U.S., there are few restrictions on non-standard

employment in that country. At the same time, it seems likely that Canada’s greater levels of

informality are at least partly a result of greater regulation of the labor market; that is, more

employers and possibly more workers themselves attempt to escape regulation through informal

and non-standard forms of work.

A final note should be made about data on informal and non-standard work. It is clear that in

both countries, this type of work is disproportionate across various demographic groups. Indeed,

women, people of color and immigrants are over-represented in almost all categories of this type

of work. This is no doubt an important factor in the general lack of representation of these

workers by unions.

177

Janice Fine and Jennifer Gordon, “Strengthening Labor Standards Enforcement through Partnerships with

Workers’ Organizations,” Politics and Society 38 (2010).

47

Table 5: Extent of informal and non-standard work in Canada and the U.S.

Canada United States

Estimates of size of informal

economy

11.5-16.4% 8.5-10%178

Type of work as % of labor force

Self-employment (as % of labor

force)

10% (2000)179

6% (2004)180

Involuntary part-time work ~6% (2006)181

>6% (Sept. 2011)182

Temporary work 7% (2006)183

10-11% (2009)184

5% (2005)185

Unions and Informal/Non-standard work

While in general, most North American unions have, in the post-war period, come to equate

unionization with collective bargaining, some unions in both countries have begun organizing

and representing the interests of informal workers. It should be noted that the craft union

tradition in both countries, based on what might be termed a mutual aid strategy of union-run

apprenticeship programs, hiring halls and benefit funds along with collective bargaining, has

continued to co-exist with the more dominant, workplace-based industrial union form throughout

this period. Industries where the craft model still predominates are typically those where work

has long been “non-standard”, that is more intermittent and casual with multiple worksites and

employers; these include construction, long-shoring, entertainment and agriculture. These

industries and the unions operating in them present models for other unions and industries or

sectors where work is becoming more informalized but they are not the focus of this report.

Rather, we look at cases where unions have attempted, sometimes successfully and sometimes

not, to organize other groups of workers who have historically, and usually for multiple reasons,

been considered beyond the reach of the traditional labor movement. As it turns out, most of

these cases concern workers who have rightly or wrongly been defined as independent

contractors.

178

Defined as % of GNP: 10% (Gutmann, 1978 in Castells and Portes, 1989), 27% (Feige, 1978 in Mattera

1985), 4.4% (Tanzi, 1980 and 1982), and 8.5% (IRS in Castells and Portes, 1989). Source Jan L. Losby et al., eds.

Informal Economy Literature Review (2002), 33. Defined as % of GNP: 8.8% (1999-2000). Source Friedrich

Schneider, “Size and Measurement of the Informal Economy in 110 Countries around the World,” 2002, 15. 179

Defined as “Own-account, self-employed”. Source Cynthia J. Cranford et al., Self-Employed Workers

Organize: Law, Policy, and Unions, (Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). See also http://

www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/sbrp-rppe.nsf/eng/rd02610.html. 180

Defined as unincorporated, don’t employ others. Source Steven Hipple, “Self-Employment in the United

States: An Update,” Monthly Labor Review (2004), 13-23. 181

Leah F. Vosko, Managing the Margins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 182

“Union Member Survey,” U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/unions2.nr0.htm 183

Vosko, “Managing the Margins.” 184

.Leah F. Vosko and Andrea M. Noack, “Precarious Jobs in Ontario: Mapping Dimensions of Labor Market

Insecurity by Workers’ Social Location and Context,” Toronto: Law Commission of Ontario, 2011. 185

Defined as direct hire temporaries, temp agency, and on-call/day labor. Source Ditsler and Fisher,

“Nonstandard Workers in the U.S. Workforce, 2005,” in The State of Working America 2008/2009, ed. Lawrence

Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz, Economic Policy Institute.

48

The cases are summarized in Tables 6 and 7. The tables describe the union and workers

involved in the case. Because there remains a heavy emphasis in the work traditional unions are

doing with informal workers on establishing a collective bargaining regime, three columns

address the issue of collective bargaining rights and agreements. The remaining columns

examine other strategies used by the unions involved and other interesting and important aspects

of the case. In addition, we present below brief, one paragraph descriptions of the cases.

Canadian Cases

With one exception, the Canadian cases include work groups that are dominated by women

or immigrants or both. They cover a wide array of occupational groups and unions.

Table 6: Summary of Canadian Cases

49

Rural Route Mail Carriers, Canada Post. Part 1186

The rural mail delivery system in Canada began in the early 1900s. From the beginning,

rural mail couriers were defined as independent contractors. As independent contractors,

couriers earned low rates of pay (“hovering” around the minimum wage) and, of course, were

not subject to basic employment laws and systems of insurance. In 1985, couriers formed the

Association of Rural Route Mail Couriers (ARRMC) in reaction to a series of adverse decisions

by Canada Post. The ARRMC allied with other grass roots organizations (including Rural

Dignity) to resist the changes and the Letter Carriers Union of Canada (LCUC) which aided the

couriers in making a legal case for employee status. Because Canada Post was, at the same

time, going through a process to restructure and consolidate its bargaining units, ARRMC

became caught in a turf war between LCUC and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers

(CUPW). The Canadian Labor Congress stepped in and issued a direct charter for a courier local

called the Rural Routes Mail Carriers of Canada. Ultimately, a court overturned labor board

decisions that would have enabled collective bargaining for the carriers. The legal setback led to

the union’s eventual disbanding in 1994.

Rural Route Mail Carriers, Canada Post, Part 2

The second major campaign for employee status began in 1995 fueled by a strategic decision

by CUPW to organize all workers handling the mail. CUPW’s strategy for the couriers was to

organize them first and to seek a legal status change second. By the end of 1998, the union had

signed up 3500 members but in a separate organization, and CUPW shifted focus to changing the

couriers’ employment status. CUPW brought a claim under NAFTA and lobbied Parliament for

change but was unsuccessful in both attempts. In 2002, with the election of a new CUPW

president, the strategy shifted to signing up a majority of couriers as CUPW members, applying

for certification, and then bargaining for the couriers as part of the regular Canada Post

bargaining cycle. (Supporting this strategy was a shift in the Supreme Court of Canada which in

2001 concluded that trade union activities were protected via the Charter of Rights protection of

freedom of association, thus increasing the likelihood that the couriers bargaining rights would

be upheld if it came through the labor board and courts again.)

CUPW invested considerable resources in the organizing drive; spending $1 million by one

estimate and involving 160 organizers. Perhaps because CUPW made clear its willingness to

strike over the issue, in late July 2003, the union and Canada Post reached an agreement that

included, among other things (including some concessions on work rules and severance pay for

some occupational groups) employee status for rural couriers as of January 1, 2004 and

substantial gains in working conditions for couriers. CUPW was recognized as the exclusive

bargaining agent for the newly renamed “rural and suburban mail carriers.”

Organizing under the Status of Artists Act187

186

This case (Parts 1 and 2) is based solely on Cranford et al., Self Employed Workers Organize. 187

This case is based on Cranford et al., Self Employed Workers Organize; Elizabeth MacPherson, “Collective

Bargaining for Independent Contractors: Is the Status of the Artist Act a Model for Other Industrial Sectors?”

http://www.capprt-tcrpap.gc.ca/eic/site/capprt-tcrpap.nsf/vwapj/Doc-elizabethmacpherson_eng.pdf/$file/Doc-

elizabethmacpherson_eng.pdf; and Gary Neil, “Status of the Artist in Canada: An Update on the 30th Anniversary

of the UNESCO Recommendation Concerning the Status of the Artist,” (paper presented at the Canadian

50

Stimulated by the UNESCO’s “Recommendations on the Status of the Artist,” and by

lobbying from the artistic community, first Quebec and then the national government passed

laws aimed at creating the institutional framework for union representation and collective

bargaining for artists who, because of their independent contractor status, would otherwise

excluded from coverage by Canadian labor law. Both laws cover a wide array of artists and

protect artists’ association from being deemed illegal combination in restraint of trade. The

Quebec law requires producers to form associations which the national law, significantly, does

not.188

The national law is administered by a separate public board whose members are expert is

the arts and allows certification for bargaining purposes if an association establishes that it is the

most representative body for the particular profession, a much looser standard than typical under

Canadian law. Collective agreements negotiated are “scale agreements”, setting minimums for

the provision of the particular professional service involved. Although there were unions and

bargaining agreements before these laws, some new scale agreements have been reached by

labor organizations certified under the SAA and several pre-existing agreements were

renegotiated under the SAA. Overall, there has not been a huge growth of unionization in this

sector.

Community Unionism in Canada: Cases of Union-Community Group Alliances

Cranford et al. argue that “community unionism” is the best fit for the organization of

precarious workers, particularly non-workplace based workers189

. For them, community

unionism takes two forms (or sits on a continuum, bordered on either end, by these two forms):

alliances between “trade union” and community groups and autonomous organizing by

community groups like worker centers. The alliance model includes cases of unions working

with community groups to organize workers into traditional unions but also into “pre-union

associations allied with trade unions.”190

They offer two main examples of this form in Canada.

One is the International Ladies Garment Workers Union’s Toronto campaign to organize

immigrant women manufacturing garments in their homes.

In the 1990s, the Ontario district of the ILGWU began to reach out to home-based garment

workers. This followed a long term decline in membership and density and the election of a

leader who was “a progressive feminist with an aggressive organizing agenda”191

The union

chartered the “Homeworkers Association as an associate member local,”192

a kind of “pre-

union”193

offering such services as legal seminars, language programs and sewing machine

maintenance programs. The second aspect of the strategy was to work in coalition with other

Conference of the Arts, 2010), http://www.capprttcrpap.gc.ca/eic/site/capprttcrpap.nsf/vwapj/CCA_SAA_

eng.pdf/$file/CCA_SAA_eng.pdf. 188

For related activities in other provinces see Neil, “Status of the Artist in Canada.” In British Columbia, a

collective bargaining regime in the arts sector has been established through interpretations of provincial labor law by

the PC Labor Relations Board. 189

Pradeep Kumar and Christopher Schenk, Paths to Union Renewal: Canadian Experiences (Toronto:

Broadview Press, 2006), 239. 190

Kumar and Schenk, Paths, 239. 191

Steven Tufts, “Community Unionism in Canada and Labor’s (Re)Organization of Space,” Antipode 30

(1998). 192

Cranford et al., Self Employed Workers Organize. 193

Tufts, “Community Unionism in Canada,” 242.

51

groups (including INTERCEDE whose campaign is described in the case below) to work for

coverage of home-based workers of all kinds under labor and employment laws. The third

component was a campaign to publicize the working conditions of homeworkers, focusing not on

the direct employer – often a member of the same ethnic community as the workers themselves –

but rather up the supply chain to the bigger manufacturers or retail stores.

The second case Cranford et al. discuss briefly is a partnership between the Canadian Labor

Congress, the Canadian wing of the United Farmworkers and the United Food and Commercial

Workers through which the Migrant Agricultural Workers Support Center was opened in

Leamington, Ontario in 2002. Today, UFCW participates in the Agricultural Workers Alliance

(AWA) which operates 10 support centers around the country.194

The union also has negotiated

collective agreements for groups of farm workers in 3 different provinces. In addition, UFCW

and the AWA have successfully advocated for farm worker coverage by the provincial

occupational safety and health law and the right to organize in Ontario and have fought for

similar coverage in other provinces.

Domestic Workers in Canada195

This case fits better into the second type of community unionism, autonomous organizing,

although it also involved support from and coalition with traditional unions. Domestic workers

in Canada were historically excluded from the protection of Canadian minimum wage and labor

laws. In the post-war period, the racial and immigration status of domestic workers began to

shift, first with the recruitment of Caribbean women. In the late 1970s, a group of women

researchers, academics and lawyers formed INTERCEDE to organize and advocate for these

workers. While INTERCEDE achieved some victories by focusing on policy changes in both

immigration and employment laws, it ultimately came to the conclusion that the standard

enforcement scheme – relying on worker complaints to the Ministry of Labor – did not work for

domestic workers due to their lack of knowledge of their rights and their shaky immigration

status which left them especially vulnerable to job loss. INTERCEDE further concluded that the

solution to this problem was collective representation of some kind.

The election of a New Democratic Party (NDP) provincial government in Ontario in 1990

offered an opportunity for the extension of collective bargaining rights to domestic workers as

part of a larger, comprehensive reform of provincial labor law. In the end, the law was changed

to eliminate the exclusion of domestic workers and the government promised to establish a task

force to examine how bargain might structurally be extended to domestic and other workers

whose employment relationships did not lend themselves well to traditional collective

bargaining, a promise that was ultimately not delivered upon. In 1996, the Conservatives

reversed the labor law reforms undertaken by the NDP and restored the exclusion of domestic

workers from the law.

194

“About AWA,” UFCW http://www.ufcw.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2003&Itemid

=245&lang=en. 195

This case is based on Judy Fudge, “Little Victories and Big Defeats: The Rise and Fall of Collective

Bargaining Rights for Domestic Workers in Ontario,” in Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in

Canada, ed. Abigail B. Bakan and Davia Stasiulis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 1997), 119-

46.

52

U.S. Cases

To an even greater degree than the Canadian cases, the work groups involved in the U.S.

cases are dominated by immigrants. The cases are concentrated in the broadly defined service

sector and transportation though also includes day laborers many of whom work in the

construction industry. Wide arrays of U.S. unions are represented including affiliates of both

the AFL-CIO and Change to Win as well as the AFL-CIO itself. The cases are summarized in

Table 7.

53

Table 7: Summary of US Cases

54

Day Laborers in the U.S. and the Laborer’s Union196

The organization and representation of day laborers – casual workers, who are typically

picked up by their short term employer from a street corner, many of whom provide unskilled

labor in the construction industry- in the United States has largely taken place through

community organizations and worker centers rather than traditional unions. In 2001, twelve of

these organizations came together to create the National Day Laborer Organizing Network

(NDLON). Today, NDLON has 43 organizational affiliates in 15 different states (mostly on the

west coast and northeast regions).197

The Laborers International Union of North American

(LIUNA) is the building trades union with the jurisdiction, among others, to organize unskilled

workers in the construction industry. Like other construction unions, LIUNA has experienced

steadily declining density for several decades. As part of LIUNA’s effort to reverse that trend, it

entered into discussions with NDLON “about how the organizations might work together to

improve the conditions of day laborers and to provide opportunities for them to unionize.”198

Over time the organizations developed 3 different approaches to partnering: from a very close

relationship where the union would actual charter a worker centers, to a looser affiliation of a

worker center with a local union, to even looser informal mutually supported alliances.

The Eastern region of LIUNA has chartered a local union with New Labor, a worker center

in New Jersey with members in residential construction, warehouse and distribution centers,

landscaping, car washes, restaurant workers and retail workers. The intent was that LIUNA

would develop collective bargaining relationships with employers; workers working for a

unionized employer would be members of Local 55. New Labor would continue its work to set a

floor for wages and help in collecting wages in cases of wage theft where an employer was non-

union. Despite all this cooperation and organizational cross-pollination, the relationship has

been rocky and has not yet produced the organizing gains hoped for. LIUNA is also pursuing its

other models of interacting with worker centers in other areas of the U.S. Overall, the attempt to

organize immigrant residential construction workers has been hampered by the substantial

decline in business in the sector during the continued financial crisis and the immigration status

of the workforce. Interestingly, LIUNA leaders argue that the lack of documentation of many of

these workers makes them ineligible for some training programs and unemployable in the

formal, collectively bargained-for sector.199

Homecare/Childcare: SEIU and others200

Workers who provide care to disabled or elderly people and to children in private homes

work under a variety of different regimes in the U.S. Some work illegally or under the table

while others are licensed. Care, when provided to the poor, is often government subsidized.

196

This case is based on Janice Fine, “When the Rubber Hits the High Road: Labor and Community

Complexities in the Greening of the Garden State,” Labor Studies Journal (2011); and Janice Fine, “Laborers

International Union of North America Case Study,” Labor and the Integration of Immigrant Workers: Germany,

France, the United States, and United Kingdom in Comparative Perspective, 2011. 197

NDLON National Day Laborer Organizing Network, http://www.ndlon.org/index.php?option=com_

content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=183. 198

Fine, “When Rubber Hits,” 125. 199

Fine, “Laborers International Union.” 200

This case is based on Adrienne Eaton et al., “Organizational Change at SEIU, 1996-2009”.

55

Care providers may be engaged in both informal and subsidized care at the same time.201

In the

last 10 years, unions in the U.S. have made enormous gains in organizing and representing the subsidized care provider segment. Service Employee International Union (SEIU) undertook this

organizing as one of its breakthrough campaigns, organizing 365,000 home-based care workers.

Like all workers in the home care sector, they tend to work alone, providing their services in

their clients’ houses and apartments. While some of these workers are hired through private

agencies and fit a more traditional employee/employer model, many more are hired on an ad hoc

basis and had been defined as independent contractors ineligible for unionization.

SEIU political campaign in California succeeded in redefining home care workers as

employees and in county-based authorities that would take over the administration of the home

care programs and serve as the workers’ employers. SEIU and American Federation of State

County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) have successfully, organized workers in various

California counties; this includes the 1999 SEIU win for 74,000 Los Angeles County workers.

Using what it learned about organizing homecare workers, SEIU and other unions were able to

transfer the model to organizing home-based childcare providers. SEIU has effectively used the

model in several states outside of California, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Washington.

AFSCME, but also the American Federation of Teachers, and the Communication Workers of

America have successfully organized home-based childcare workers using the same strategy.

The collective agreements resulting from these campaigns have raised standards for the covered

workers.

The Teamsters, Part 1: Port truck drivers202

The occupation of truck driving has long included both waged employees along with owner-

operators. It is also an occupation that has been subject to a great deal of employer distancing

through the movement of employees to often inappropriate or illegal independent contractor

status in the past two decades. Paralleling this history is a debate within the Teamsters union as

to the boundaries of membership; throughout most of its history, the Teamsters constitution has

made room for owner-operators as members.203

Below we discuss two recent examples of

Teamster outreach to drivers misclassified as independent contractors.

The first of these concerns drivers who haul goods to and from the U.S.’s ports. Independent

contractor status puts these drivers outside the protection of labor and employment laws and

forces them to “bear all the risk and responsibilities of small businessmen, including paying their

truck leases, buying fuel, paying tolls, paying license fees, truck maintenance and repair, liability

insurance, unemployment and workers’ compensation, social security.” 204

It has also meant that

their trucks are often in bad shape and are heavy air polluters. The condition of these trucks is of

crucial importance because it has become the linchpin of a coalition and regulatory strategy

aimed at improving working conditions for the drivers through union representation along with

201

Linda Houser and Elizabeth Nisbet, “Unionized Home-Based Child Care Providers in New Jersey (paper

presentation at LERA Annual Meeting, January 2012, Chicago). 202

This case is based solely on Bensman, David. “Challenges and Opportunities: The Labor/Environmental

Alliance for Clean Air and Clean Trucks in New York and New Jersey.” May 2010, unpublished paper. 203

Cobble and Vosko, 2000, pp. 301-305 204

Bensman, 2010, 2.

56

environmental outcomes. “In 2006, the Teamsters Union joined with Change to Win [– the new

federation set up in 2005 as an alternative to the AFL-CIO -] to organize port truckers.”205

The union coalition developed a strategy of allying with groups from the environmental,

environmental justice, and public health arenas, as well as faith-based and other community

organizations to improve the environmental impact of the ports and establish employment status

to the drivers, thus providing them also with collective bargaining rights. In 2007, the coalition

succeeded in getting the Harbor Commissions of both Los Angeles and Long Beach, California

to adopt a set of requirements for trucking companies moving freight in and out of the port to

improve air quality around the port, including a requirement that the companies employ their

drivers.206

The industry also challenged the employment requirement in court, and in late

September 2011 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals voided the employment requirement.

Meanwhile, the campaign continues in LA and other ports on the west and east coasts of the U.S.

and at the federal level.207

The Teamsters, Part 2: FedEx Ground Drivers208

FedEx Ground was established in 1998 as a non-union competitor to USPS and UPS. FedEx

Ground has required drivers to purchase or lease their vehicles as well as sign an Agreement

stating that the worker will, “operate as an independent contractor and not an employee for any

purpose”. In response to the inequities of being classified as independent contractors, drivers

from five terminals (Fairfield, NJ, Barrington, NJ, Hartford, CT, Northboro, MA, and

Wilmington, MA) decided to organize and challenged their status at the NLRB. In 2004 the

drivers were officially declared employees by the NLRB and granted the right to organize.

Drivers approached the Teamsters and in 2006, Teamsters passed a resolution to work in

solidarity with FedEx workers across the country. The legal battles continue with FedEx also

challenging the NLRB’s jurisdiction. At the same time, FedEx management has responded with

to local organizing campaigns with a vigorous anti-union campaign that has successfully

defeated most of the attempts to unionize.

205

Bensman, 2010, 2. 206

Strong opposition from the trucking industry eventually forced the Long Beach commission to back away

from the employment requirement. 207

Political Support. Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports. <http://cleanandsafeports.org/letters-of-support/>. 208

This case is based on Johansson, Erin. "Fed Up with FedEx: How FedEx Ground Tramples with Workers'

Rights and Civil Rights." American Rights at Work. Oct. 2007.

<http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/dmdocuments/ ARAWReports/fedupwithfedex.pdf>. 13 Nov. 2011;

Metcalf, Eddy. "FedEx Drivers Aren't Pilots Campaign Urges A End To FedEx Loophole." AvStop » Number One

Online General Aviation News and Magazine. 9 June 2010.

<http://avstop.com/news_june_2010/fedex_drivers_aren't_pilots_campaign_urges_a_end_to_fedex_loophole.htm>.

13 Nov. 2011; Munroe, Galen, and Leigh Strope. "Teamsters Delegates Back Resolution to Secure FedEx Workers

Right to Pursue Union Representation | International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT)." 27 June 2006

<http://www.teamster.org/content/teamsters-delegates-back-resolution-secure-fedex-workers-right-pursue-union-

representation>. 13 Nov. 2011 ; Saveland, Todd D. "FedEx's New "Employees": Their Disgruntled Independent

Contractors." Law Journal Library. Hein Online, 2009. Pages 95-119.

<http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/tportl36>. 13 Nov. 2011; and Sivaraman, Aarthi. "FedEx,

UPS Clash over Bill on FedEx Labor Rules" Business & Financial News, Breaking US & International News |

Reuters.com. 27 Oct. 2009. <http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/10/28/us-parcel-debate-

idUSTRE59R03E20091028>. 13 Nov. 2011.

57

CWA, WashTech and high tech workers209

WashTech was formed in 1998 by several of Microsoft’s temporary and contract workers,

often known as “permatemps” because they frequently continued working for the company for

many years while remaining formal designated as “temporary” with all the resulting inequities

that accompany that status. These workers were upset about an action by Washington state to

exclude them from coverage of state overtime law. Shortly after its founding, WashTech

affiliated with the Communications Workers of America. Over its history WashTech has

drawnmembers from a variety of other high tech firms, many headquartered in Washington

State. The organization has two levels of involvement, dues paying members and non-paying

“subscribers”; there are many more of the latter than the former. WashTech has support worker

lawsuits against misclassification as independent contractors including the big case at Microsoft

which was settled by the company for $97 million. WashTech also engages in public policy

advocacy at the state and national level including on visa issues. WashTech seeks to establish

traditional collective bargaining relationships where possible, but has thus far only negotiated

four contracts. One major barrier the barriers established by the NLRB to organizing workers

who are essentially co-employed by both a client firm and a temporary employment agency.

Throughout, CWA has remained committed to supporting a non-collective bargaining form of

unionism for these highly skilled but non-traditionally employed workers.

AFL-CIO Partnerships with Non-Traditional Labor Organizations

In 2006, the AFL-CIO established a National Worker Center partnership whereby the

federation could affiliate worker centers with state and local central labor bodies. The first such

affiliation was established at the national level with the National Day Laborers Organizing

Network (NDLON – see also the Laborers case above), itself a federation of worker centers and

community groups representing or working with day laborers. In addition to cooperation at the

local level between NDLON affiliates and state and local AFL-CIO bodies, the partnership

called for cooperation around immigration reform. Most recently, the AFL-CIO partnered with

the Taxi Workers Alliance to charter a new Taxi Workers Organizing Committee, proclaiming

209

This case is based on "Amazon, Etown Workers Lose Jobs in Dot-Com Slide." Communications Workers of

America. 1 Mar. 2001. <http://www.cwa-union.org/news/entry/amazon_etown_workers_lose_jobs_in_dot-

com_slide>. 17 Nov. 2011; Brophy, Enda. "System Error: Labor Precarity and Collective Organizing at Microsoft."

Canadian Journal of Communication 31:3, 2006. 619-38. <http://cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/

1767/1886>. 13 Nov. 2011; "CWA and Hi-Tech Affiliate Take on $300 Billion Microsoft." Communications

Workers of America. 1 Nov. 1998. <http://www.cwa-union.org/news/entry/cwa_and_hi-

tech_affiliate_take_on_300_billion _microsoft#.TsV7Mz0k67s>. 17 Nov. 2011; Sreenan, Malachy. "WashTech

Launches Campaign to Organize AT&T Mobility Finance Employees." WashTech. 26 Mar. 2010.

<http://www.washtech.org/index.php?option=com _content&view=article&id=76:washtech-launches-campaign-to-

organize-atat-mobility-finance-employees&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50>. 13 Nov. 2011; "Unemployment Up,

80,000 Slashed in March Govt Sees Strong Demand for Guest Worker Visas." WashTech. 3 Apr. 2008.

<http://archive.washtech.org/news/ industry/display.php?ID_Content=5228>. 13 Nov. 2011; Van Jaarsveld,

Danielle D. "Collective Representation Among High-Tech Workers at Microsoft and Beyond: Lessons from

WashTech/CWA." Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 43:2, 25 Mar. 2004. 364-85; "WashTech

Fights for Permatemps on Three Fronts." Communications Workers of America. 1 May 1999. <http://www.cwa-

union.org/news/entry/washtech_fights_ for_permatemps_on_three_fronts#.TsWPoj0k67s>; and Washington

Alliance of Technology Workers. http://washtech.org/; D. Nack and J. Tarlau, “The Communication Workers

Experience with Open-Source Unionism”, WorkingUSA, Vol. 8(6), 2005, pp. 721-732.

http://washtech.org/

58

that “The affiliation with the Taxi Workers Alliance, the newest union to join the AFL-CIO, is

the furthest step taken so far to involve workers groups in the broader labor movement.”210

In

issuing a formal charter to the Taxi Workers Alliance, the AFL-CIO established that group as “a

national umbrella for organizing new unions of taxi workers, beginning with the New York Taxi

Workers Alliance and the Philadelphia Taxi Workers Alliance.” The New York group had

previously joined the New York City Central Labor Council in 2006. The intent of the new

charter is to launch new organizing driver in other cities where there are currently no taxi

unions.211

Other formal partnerships were established in May 2011 with the Domestic Workers

Alliance and the National Guest workers’ Alliance, coinciding with the Excluded Workers

Congress held in New York City.

Conclusions

Overall, North American unions have had trouble seeing beyond a traditional collective

bargaining relationship. Even when they are working with and advocating for informal economy

workers it is usually with the intent of finding a way to create a more traditional employment and

collective bargaining relationship. Beyond the focus on collective bargaining, there are also

issues of structure, organizational culture and demographics that have slowed the inclusion of

informal workers into traditional unions. Nonetheless, there is a significant and growing level of

experimentation. Our cases indicate that achieving collective bargaining for informal workers

typically involves both legal changes, accomplished through challenges to administrative

agencies or courts or through legislation or Executive Orders, and structural changes to create an

employing entity. It is likely that some unions are put off by the substantial resources and time

required to be successful in these campaigns. Where unions have committed to organizing and

representing informal workers, they have typically done so for their own strategic reasons, either

commitment to growth in general or commitment to growth or maintenance of density in their

core industries or sectors and a recognition that informal workers constitute a significant and

often growing portion of that industry or sector.

A few other observations are in order. Our cases indicate that informal workers have

frequently gotten caught in the middle of inter-union or inter-labor organization conflicts. This

too may slow their inclusion. It’s possible that campaigns to organize informal workers also

create intra-organizational conflict. This is not yet clear because the existing research often does

not provide enough detail about the dynamics of decision-making within the union that leads to

the commitment to organize these workers. Finally, it is important to note that in most of our

cases, these workers had either self-organized into non-traditional labor organizations or were

being served by a community organization created by middle-class reformers or a hybrid of both,

before the traditional union became interested and involved. This makes the division between

union and nonunion organization a particularly artificial one.

210

“Future of Work and Unions Debated at AFL-CIO, as Taxi Workers Affiliate with Federation,” IBEW,

http://www.ibew.org/articles/11daily/1110/111024_TaxiDrivers.htm. 211

“The Taxi Workers Alliance Organizing Committee,” AFL-CIO, http://aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/

ecouncil/ec08032011a.cfm.

59

EUROPEAN TRADE UNIONS AND ‘ATYPICAL’ WORKERS

Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, Mihai Varga and Richard Hyman

Introduction

This chapter covers the situation of informal or ‘atypical’ workers and the responses of trade

unions in Europe. Though it is more than twenty years since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, there

are still significant differences between the economies, labor markets and industrial relations

institutions of Western and Eastern Europe; we therefore present separate sections for the two

regions. The section on Western Europe is based largely on material from research into trade

unionism in ten west European countries.212

Union leaders throughout Western Europe now

consider the increase in precarious forms of work, including part-time, temporary or agency,

contracted-out, posted, dependent self-employed and undocumented work, to be one of the major

challenges which they currently face, and one which requires changes in their way of thinking,

organization, policies and structure. Unionists in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where

informal work is more extensive than in the west and other forms of atypical work are on the

increase, are beginning to share these concerns and are developing policies and actions in

response.

We begin with a brief overview of the industrial relations setting of Western and Central and

Eastern Europe, then proceed to identify the main varieties of atypical work, explain some of the

challenges the rise in atypical work has created for trade unions, and highlight examples of their

response. We conclude that while unions have made progress in addressing the concerns of

atypical workers, they will have to make substantial changes to their structures, thinking and way

of operating in order to respond fully to the challenges of atypical work and workers.

Europe comprises a complex patchwork of countries with distinctive traditions and ‘varieties

of capitalism’. It is common to refer to a ‘European social model’, a concept which most closely

matches the countries of western continental Europe.213

Key features include highly developed

welfare states; relatively extensive restrictions on the employer’s right to hire and fire; trade

unions with greater membership density and social influence than in the other regions covered in

this study; a high coverage of collective agreements based on multi-employer bargaining; and

works councils or similar structures which can influence decisions on employment. However, the

degree to which these features apply differs between countries, and neoliberalism and

globalisation have eroded some of their features in Western Europe, while such institutions are

largely absent in CEE. Another distinctive feature is the existence of a supranational authority,

the European Union (EU). Originally formed in 1957 with six members, by the mid-1990s it had

grown to cover almost the whole of Western Europe (the main exceptions were Norway and

Switzerland). In 2004 and 2007 it admitted 10 CEE countries. The EU far from constitutes a

federal state, but it does possess significant regulatory powers, including over labor market

issues. In the past two decades it has adopted legislation (‘directives’) applying to part-time

work, fixed-term contracts and temporary agency work.

212

For fuller details see R. Gumbrell-McCormick, “European Trade Unions and Atypical Workers.” Industrial

Relations Journal 42 (2011), 293-310. 213

G. Esping-Anderen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).

60

‘Atypical’ and ‘Informal’ Employment in Western Europe

A reflection of the extent of employment security and labor market regulation in Western

Europe is that strictly ‘informal’ work is relatively rare (although it is far higher in CEE

countries, as explained below). The ‘normal’ employment relationship traditionally involved a

full-time job with an employer who could terminate the contract only for narrowly defined

reasons, which in many countries could be challenged in the labor courts. Though the OECD214

index of strictness of employment protection legislation (EPL) is widely criticised, it does

provide a clear indication of the distinctiveness of the European model. For this reason, the drive

to create more flexible labor markets poses particular challenges for industrial relations and trade

unions in Western Europe.

The notion of ‘atypical’ work is defined negatively, as those types of employment

relationships which do not match the traditional ‘normal’ pattern. The main forms of ‘atypical’

work in Europe are: part-time work (although this is now highly regulated in most of Western

Europe and can no longer be considered ‘precarious’ in most respects), fixed-term or short-term

contracts, temporary and temporary agency work (TAW), ‘outsourced’ work, ‘dependent’ self-

employment, and undocumented work. The last two categories, dependent self-employed and

undocumented work, are probably the closest to the ‘third world’ model of informal

employment. In much of Europe, women, young people, and members of ethnic minorities are

the most likely to be employed on a precarious or ‘atypical’ basis. The variety of forms of

‘atypical’ work offers employers a wide range of strategic choice.215

Despite the overall high

level of employment protection in most of Western Europe, there is significant cross-national

variation in the regulation (and often, recent deregulation) of different types of precarious work.

Firms seeking increased flexibility or reduced labor costs have proved increasingly adept in

identifying and exploiting the particular loopholes in each national regulatory system: one reason

for the differences in national patterns of ‘atypical’ employment. Table 8 shows the extent of

various forms of atypical or precarious employment in ten Western European Countries as well

as provides a measure of the strength of the legal framework governing these types of work.

214

OECD Employment Outlook, 2004.

61

Table 8

Trade Union Perceptions of the Challenges

While employers can select from a range of options in their use of atypical labor, trade

unions also face a strategic choice in their response to the rise of precarious work. Their

traditional reaction has often been to oppose atypical work in all its forms, and as a consequence

to avoid or exclude precarious workers; but in recent years most have accepted that precarity is a

reality that will not go away, and have recognised the need to represent the interests of this group

of workers. How they do respond is conditioned by their own structures and ideologies, the

national industrial relations system in which they operate the economic situation and other

factors.

Trade unions in Europe grew to maturity under ‘Fordism’, organizing and representing a

relatively homogeneous group of potential members: white, male, and working in full-time,

relatively secure occupations. European industrial relations systems were largely based on the

needs and characteristics of these groups of workers, and trade union strategy and action have

since then operated within the structures and constraints of those systems. The interdependence

of union ideologies, structures and demands and the industrial relations system makes it difficult

for unions today to respond effectively to new challenges without undertaking major attitudinal

and organizational changes.

One example of attitudinal change is the changing perception of part-time and ‘flexi-time’

work, which arose in conjunction with the increased employment of women with family

responsibilities. Unions in most European countries were often less concerned with defending

the rights of part-time workers than with opposing such work per se, calling instead for improved

child-care facilities so that women could work full-time. Unionists assumed that workers

preferred full-time work, and perceived no difference between precariousness and flexibility, as

employers sought to confuse the two and to impose their own version of flexibility to their own

benefit. The understanding that some types of flexibility could be attractive to workers has come

relatively recently, and has led to a shift in trade union attitudes and demands, so that many have

62

now developed proposals to minimise the negative aspects of part-time or flexi-time work,

leaving the more positive aspects. Much the same transformation in attitudes has accompanied

the more recent rise of temporary work, including TAW, which is perceived as (and often is) a

threat to the status of ‘typical’ workers, but which is nevertheless preferred by some women and

also by younger workers.

There are many practical challenges as well in the rise of precarious work. The increased

frequency of changes in jobs and even occupations affects not only young people, who for a

variety of reasons may prefer to change jobs more frequently, but also many others who have

been in long-term stable employment but have been forced into precariousness and may also

have to change jobs or occupations. It has become more difficult for unions to rely on the

traditional industrial or occupational basis for organization and identity. It is also more difficult

for them to recruit and organize temporary workers, and their membership is often short-lived as

they change jobs, sectors and even country. Another practical challenge is that many temporary

workers, as well as out-sourced and dependent self-employed workers, are at the same workplace

as others on stable, long-term contracts, but officially for a different employer, either an agency,

a separate employer for a contracted-out part of the business, or on their own account. In the case

of TAW, they may be carrying out the same tasks as those on permanent contracts, while

contracted-out workers are less likely to be working side-by-side with workers on permanent

contracts and more likely to be performing a distinct function, such as cleaning or transport. The

separate contractual status of these workers creates both practical and legal difficulties for unions

in seeking to represent the different and sometimes conflicting interests of these workers along

with the interests of other workers at the same site.

For these and other reasons, atypical workers and forms of work present major challenges to

trade unions and their traditional attitudes and demands, as well as their ways of working and

recruiting, organizing and representing members.

Trade Union Responses

Trade union responses to the challenge of atypical work have taken many forms, involving

organizing and recruitment, revisions to internal structures and new industrial, political and

societal policies and actions. Once unions have decided to act on behalf of atypical and

precarious workers, they have had to address the exclusion of these workers from the union.

Opposition to precarious work has often meant, in practice if not by design, that many unions

have excluded precarious workers, for example by limiting membership to those working over a

specific number of hours or with a particular contract of employment. The German IG Metall,

for example, traditionally refused to organize TAW workers on the grounds that this would give

temporary work ‘legitimacy’. Even when not formally excluding potential members, until

recently few unions sought to recruit atypical workers, and most failed to address their specific

concerns in collective bargaining, services and proposals for legislation. Devoting more time and

resources to atypical workers was seen as taking away attention from ‘traditional’ workers at a

time that resources were limited. Further, the interests of these two groups have sometimes

indeed been in conflict. Indeed, some unions have tacitly accepted the outsourcing of risk as a

means of enhancing the security of their core members’.216

More generally, ‘most European

216

B. Palier and K. Thelen, “Institutionalizing Dualism: Complementaries and Change in France and

Germany,” Politics and Society 38 (2010): 119-48.

63

unions have a rather strong institutional position... [and thus] the incentive to organize new

groups of workers is relatively weak.’217

However, unions have gradually come to understand that the increase in atypical forms of

work weakens their capacity to act unless they succeed in including such workers in their

membership. Organizing these workers has therefore become a priority for many unions and

confederations. This can be carried out at many levels: local, sectoral, national. In the

Netherlands, the multi-industrial union FNV Bondgenoten has devoted a great deal of resources

to organizing seasonal agricultural workers, many of them CEE migrants. In 2010 it organized

the longest Dutch strike since the 1930s, winning improved pay and conditions for workers, most

of them immigrants, employed by the contracted-out cleaning operations for the Dutch railways

and Schiphol airport. The Dutch cleaners’ campaign, and a similar campaign for a living wage

for cleaners in London,218

profited from coalitions between trade unions and community and

religious groups. The difficulty in recruiting highly precarious workers, such as immigrants,

whether documented or not, is that these workers may lose their jobs as a result of union activity

or simply leave because of the seasonality of the work (especially in agriculture and tourism) or

to return to their native country. However, this campaign has led to improved terms and

conditions that should remain for future workers even if the individual workers originally

involved leave the job and the union.

Inclusion of atypical workers has sometimes had profound implications for union structures.

The formation by all three Italian confederations of unions for temporary workers219

– of which

the CGIL union, NIdiL, is the most active – represents one end of the spectrum; but many other,

smaller adjustments have been made in order to accommodate the inclusion of atypical workers.

The more usual pattern is to organize atypical workers into existing local or national union

bodies. Efforts to organize TAW workers working at the same site and carrying out the same

jobs as permanent staff are particularly fraught with difficulties, as contractual difference in

terms and conditions and the identity of the official employer create obstacles to common action.

These are not however irrevocable, as union success in the Irish telecommunications sector

shows.220

Heery221

and other writers have identified a need to ‘move away from the enterprise’ in

action involving or on behalf of precarious and atypical workers. One obstacle to organization

has been the tendency of temporary or other atypical workers to be employed in small

enterprises, such as in catering or retail. French unions like the CGT in the Paris region have

responded by organizing single unions for entire shopping centers222

, and unions in the UK have

created networks for organizing in SMEs, sometimes with the support of an official covering a

large geographical area. A further problem is that atypical workers, especially young workers,

217

D. Kloosterboer, “Trade Union Strategies to Organise Young, Ethnic Minority, and Atypical Workers,”

Economia e Lavoro 42 (2008): 120-1. 218

M. Simms, Trade Union Strategies to Recruit New Groups of Workers-United Kingdom (Dublin: European

Foundation, 2010). See also http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/studies/tn0901028s/uk0901029 q.htm. 219

S. Leonardi, “Union Organization of Employees in Atypical and Precarious Work in Italy,” International

Journal of Action Research 4 (2008): 203-24. 220

R. MacKenzie, “Why Would Contingent Workers Join a Trade Union? Union Organization of Contingent

Workers in the Irish Telecommunications Sector,” European Journal of Industrial Relations 16 (2010): 153-68. 221

E. Heery, “The Trade Union Response to Agency Labor in Britain” Industrial Relations Journal 35 (2004):

434-50; and E. Heery, “Trade Unions and Contingent Labor: Scale and Method,” Cambridge Journal of Regions,

Economy and Society 2 (2009): 429-42. 222

See also S. Béroud, “Organiser les inorganisés: Des expérimentations syndicales entre renouveau des

pratiques et échec de la syndicalisation,” Politix 22 (2009): 127-46.

64

change jobs and sometimes occupations frequently. This has been addressed in some cases by

increasing the emphasis on local territorial-based organization. The CGIL in Milan is seeking to

turn its existing Camera del Lavoro into a ‘one-stop’ trade union office for atypical young

workers, so that they do not need to keep changing their industrial union affiliation every time

they change jobs and occupations. Territorial-based organization is more common in some

countries than in others, and varies even within countries. The French CGT, for example, has

always had a territorial as well as an industrial structure, but this is not the standard practice in

the other leading French confederations CFDT or FO.

Structural Issues

Precarious forms of work, especially TAW, have sometimes created jurisdictional problems

within confederations. Should temporary workers be organized in the union for the sector in

which they are currently working but may shortly leave, or in a separate union in which they can

maintain their membership, but with the result that workers in the same plant with different

contractual status are in different unions?. Efforts to find a ‘home’ for workers with which

unions lack prior experience can result in anomalous solutions: for example, in France the CGT

initially grouped contracted-out female cleaners with dockers, as they were ostensibly employed

on somewhat similar terms. The drive to create a dedicated union body for precarious workers

within the CGT has aroused controversy. But the Italian confederations, in particular the CGIL’s

NiDIL, have had some success with organizing temporary workers in separate unions. Some

unions are even organizing cross-nationally in order to represent migrant workers. In 2004 the

German construction union IG BAU established a ‘European Migrant Workers’ Union223

,’ with

offices in Poland, while many unions are increasingly developing cooperative links with their

counterparts in the countries of origin of migrant workers.

Collective Bargaining and Industrial Action

In recent years, most unions have sought to include part-time, contracted-out, self-employed

or TAW workers in collective bargaining; and to address their concerns in the bargaining

agenda. However, legal rules in many countries make this difficult, particularly in the case of

those not formally employed by the same employer as the core workforce. Unions have often

been able to cover directly employed temporary workers, but where agreements are negotiated

for outsourced or TAW workers these normally require a separate agreement with the formal

employer. There are some exceptions, however, as with the success of unions in Germany and

Austria in defending temporary and dependent self-employed workers against lay-offs.224

More

generally, unions have concentrated on making sure that all terms and conditions apply to these

workers and that they are not subject to discrimination in the provision of benefits, such as

training opportunities.

Beyond the company level, collective bargaining at the sectoral or national level in countries

where this is the practice has gradually come to include more demands involving the regulation

of part-time and temporary work. Industry-wide collective agreements for the temporary sector

223

H. Dribbusch, European Migrant Workers Union Founded (Dublin: European Foundation, 2004). See also

http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2004/09/feature/de0409206f.htm. 224

H. Holst, A. Aust, and S. Pernicka, “Kollektive Interessenvertretung im strategischen Dilemma: Atypisch

Beschäftigte und die ‘dreifache’ Krise der Gewerksschaften,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 37 (2008): 158-76.

65

have been concluded in Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium. In some countries, such as

France, agency workers should by law be paid above the normal rate for directly employed

workers as compensation for their insecurity, but elsewhere the terms of TAW agreements are

inferior. In Germany, IG Metall launched a campaign in 2007 for equal pay for agency workers,

and has attempted to persuade its works councillors to pursue company agreements guaranteeing

parity.

The preceding sections indicated some of the obstacles to united action: the most important

perhaps being the separation of precarious workers from others by bargaining unit, location, task,

or interest. The characteristics and conditions of precarious workers themselves also militate

against successful involvement in action: the weaker identification with the workplace and with

fellow workers and insecurity itself make union involvement more difficult for them. The

difficulty of including atypical workers in broader industrial action is confirmed in the German

case, where collective action has recently become more difficult in retail225

and in engineering.226

Yet industrial action carried out by atypical workers on their own has sometimes been

successful, whether in the cleaners’ strike organized by FNV Bondgenoten, or in actions with

similar precarious groups in France.227

So too has industrial action carried out by ‘traditional’

workers on behalf of atypical workers, for example in Austria, where the GPA union carried out

a successful campaign against spurious self-employment in call centers, or in Italy, where strikes

often involve permanent workers supporting the grievances of temporary workers, where the

latter are not allowed to take action for legal or contractual reasons.

Political Responses

Unions have also responded to the rise in precarious work through action within political

parties, lobbying of government and in tripartite negotiations. As noted above, unions have

opposed the introduction of precarity and have sought to control its worst abuses through the

introduction of or improvements to legislation and other forms of regulation. Confederations

such as the Swedish LO, the Dutch FNV and the Belgian ACV/CSC and ABVV/FGTB have

concentrated on pressuring government to limit the length of temporary contracts, for example to

a maximum of six months in Sweden, recently increased to 12 months, or on the enforcement of

strict rules for the operation of temporary work agencies. Elsewhere, unions have sought to

regulate the reasons for which temporary workers may be hired.

While measures aimed at controlling and limiting the use of atypical work, especially TAW,

have not always benefitted the atypical workers themselves but have instead led to a reduction in

their numbers, some union proposals for regulation have directly benefitted these workers.

General measures aimed at improving the wages or conditions of all workers can have an

especially positive impact on atypical workers, such as the introduction of the minimum wage in

the UK. Other measures and proposals have been specifically aimed at improving the conditions

of atypical workers, usually part-time or temporary. In France, the CGT has proposed a way to

improve the security of individual workers while protecting their right to flexibility, through a

single contract that would follow workers from one job to the next. This approach has been

225

H. Dribbusch, Gewerkschaftliche Mitgliedergewinnung im Dienstleistungssktor: Ein Drei-Länder-Vergleich

im Einzelhandel (Berlin: Edition Sigma, 2003). 226

I. Greer, “Organized Industrial Relations in the Information Economy: The German Automotive Sector as a

Test Case,” New Technology, Work and Employment 23 (2008): 181-96. 227

A. Mabrouki, Génération précaire (Paris : Cherche midi, 2004).

66

adopted in the state provision of education and training, which is now transferrable between jobs.

The effective regulation of part-time work provides perhaps the best example of measures

proposed by unions that protect the atypical workers themselves and also prevent employers

from using them to undercut the wages and status of full-time workers. Unions have also sought

regulation at the EU level, notably through the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC),

which played a major part in achieving Directives on posted workers (1996), part-time work

(1997), fixed-term contracts (1999) and TAW (2008). These have in turn required strengthening

of legislative provisions in most member states.

Societal Engagement

Political pressure often goes hand-in-hand with coalition building with broader societal

organizations, and many European trade unions have developed links with community

organizations and other NGOs for campaigns to organize and defend the interests of atypical

workers. This was certainly the case with the FNV Bondgenoten cleaners’ campaign, which took

long and careful planning and the building of relationships with mosques and other community

organizations for the largely immigrant work force. The UK ‘living wage’ campaign to protest

against the low wages and poor working conditions of contracted-out cleaners in large banks in

the City of London, as well as several universities, has had some successes but has been as much

an NGO as a trade union initiative.

Another type of campaign is the mass public mobilization that has characterized much of

French trade union action. One example of this was the campaign led by French trade unions,

student organizations and NGOs in 2006 against the government’s proposal for a contrat de

première embauche, which proposed inferior terms and conditions for young workers in their

first jobs. The mass demonstrations forced the government to withdraw its plans; but they were

not accompanied by strikes or other forms of traditional trade union industrial action. However,

unions such as CGT have campaigned actively in support of undocumented workers (sans

papiers), including organizing high-profile strikes. Another example was the campaign by ver.di

in Germany, in association with various NGOs, around the retail chain Lidl. This campaign

exposed the employer’s blatant violations of the human rights of its workers, but did not lead to a

long-term increase in trade union membership or representation.228

Such examples indicate a

tension between political/community campaigning and trade union organizing and recruitment.

Clearly, trade unions have come a long way from the exclusion of atypical workers and have

sought to include precarious workers in recruitment and organizing campaigns, have included

them in collective bargaining demands, and in some cases have altered structures to represent

them more effectively. Their responses have varied over time, and from one industry, region and

country to another. In the last section we try to identify some common themes.

228

I. Artus, “Prekäre Interessenvertretung: Ein deutsch-französischer Vergleich von Beschäftigtenrepräsentation

im niedrig entlohnten Dienstleistungsbereich,” Industrielle Beziehungen 14 (2007): 5-29; and K. Gajewska and J.

Niesyto, “Organising Campaign as a ‘Revitaliser’ for Trade Unions? The Example of the Lidl Campaign,”

Industrial Relations Journal 40 (2009): 156-71.

67

Post-communist Trade Unions and Precarious Work in Central and Eastern Europe

Over the past twenty years, post-communist CEE has seen tremendous changes in the

employment relationship, probably far greater than in most other countries of the world. The

challenges for trade unions have been immense.229

In most CEE countries – in particular the

largest – the dominant union confederations are ‘reformed’ successors of the former official

unions, and have inherited a non-adversarial approach to industrial relations coupled with control

over certain social benefits that make membership attractive to workers. This section first

discusses the situation of post-communist unions in general, and then focuses in depth on two

countries, Romania and Ukraine.

Post-communism involved a transition – in many countries, extremely rapid – from state

ownership and planning to a market economy. The employment relationship changed

fundamentally as a myriad of private owners with diverse interests in production replaced the

relatively stable state employer. The integrated markets of the Soviet era collapsed, while a range

of protectionist measures obstructed the creation of new markets in the west. The long process of

accession to the EU brought new rules of the game: those countries which had not already

pursued economic liberalisation were obliged to do so. The effect of these changes was a sharp

fall in GDP and massive job loss throughout the region. Negotiating the terms of job destruction

– the size of unemployment benefits, early retirement schemes – became the key trade union

priority.

In this context, it is no surprise that the increasingly precarious character of jobs was not a

priority for trade unions. Rather, they focused on preserving jobs (any jobs) and obtaining the

best possible deals where job preservation was too difficult. This agenda still dominates trade

union priorities across the region, particularly given the world economic crisis. Unions are hard

pressed in this respect, since the austerity measures that followed the crisis targeted the public

sector with massive layoffs. As in Western Europe, the public sector is a union stronghold, and

also one of the very few sectors that actually generated employment during the transition. In the

private sector, in the current crisis unions have joined with local employers to lobby the state for

protection under the banner of job preservation. This agenda is enough to keep busy a trade

union movement that is only twenty years old.230

The destruction of formal economy jobs did not only result in a growth in the informal

economy and other precarious jobs; across the region, people retreated to the household

economy, or combine formal employment and household resources for survival.231

An interest

in fighting precarious work has therefore emerged only slowly, and often does not stem from

local union initiatives. Important cross-national initiatives in the region stem from the agency of

union-friendly Western organizations, most notably the German Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES)

or the Dutch-based Transnationals Information Exchange. It was the FES that hosted the biggest

pan-regional initiative on the issue, a December 2007 conference ‘Non-standard employment

forms and the response of trade unions’; this brought together unions from Azerbaijan, Belarus,

229

For an overview and a discussion of various measures for asserting their strengths in cross-European

perspectives, see S. Crowley, “Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe: Historical Legacies and

Comparative Perspective,” East European Politics and Societies 18 (2004): 394-429. 230

M. Varga, “Political Involvement in Industrial Conflict in Ukraine during the World Economic Crisis, 2008-

2010,” Emecon: Journal for Employment and Economy in Central and Eastern Europe 1 (2010): 1-19. 231

C. Wallace and R. Latcheva, “Economic Transformation Outside the Law: Corruption, Trust in Public

Institutions and the Informal Economy in Transition Countries of Central and Eastern Europe,” Europe-Asia Studies

58 (2006): 81-102.

68

Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. The result was a declaration outlining political action as the

main tool for tackling precarious work.

Our two focal countries are geographical neighbours but have very different post-communist

economic trajectories and labor movements. Romania recovered its communist-era GDP around

2004 and joined the European Union in 2007. Some of its national unions developed an extreme

pattern of adversarial relations with the government and later with private employers, turning

Romania into the region’s most strike-prone country. Ukraine has never regained its communist-

era GDP and remains outside the EU. Its trade unions have maintained a self-proclaimed

‘partnership’-approach to the government (as in Soviet times), in exchange for managing key

social benefits such as housing and accident insurance. Both countries experienced wide-scale

job destruction, with a massive decrease in the importance of formal employment for the survival

strategies of the population. An EBRD report232

, with data from the 1990s – later figures have

not been collected – claimed that the two countries have the region’s (and Europe’s) biggest

informal economies. This ranking is unlikely to have changed.

At the 2007 conference mentioned above, Ukraine was represented by its biggest union

confederations, including the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (Federatsiya Profspylok

Ukrainy, FPU), the largest union with an estimated membership of 8-10 million (roughly half the

employed population). The FPU translated this into political action aimed to pressure Parliament

to regulate non-standard employment and ban outsourcing.233

The chances of success seem

minimal: the Ukrainian authorities have been able to ignore almost every single demand voiced

by trade unions since the country’s independence in 1991.234

There were no similar initiatives in those CEE countries that joined the EU. Instead, trade

unions oppose precarious employment mainly (a) within national boundaries, (b) and in response

to government initiatives to ‘deregulate’ labor markets through revisions of Labor Codes. Thus, a

recent report on Slovakia235

(the only study of strategies of post-communist unions to tackle

precarious work) shows how KOZ SR, the main union confederation, resisted government

changes to the Labor Code intended to introduce a broad range of precarious work types. In

Romania, trade unions failed to influence the new Labor Code in 2011, since they abandoned

negotiations in protest at a simultaneous offensive by government coupling deregulation with

significant limitations to collective bargaining.236

Independently of political struggles, three of the five Romanian trade union confederations

pursue Programs aiming to return vulnerable groups to formal employment – whether or not the

formal jobs are part-time, involve dependent self-employment, or in any other way represent

precarious work. The emphasis is thus on employment of any kind, rather than its quality – a

reflection of the priorities of the government rather than the unions themselves. The Programs

are quite small (targeting at best 1,000 people each). More positively, they all address implicitly

or explicitly groups where exclusion from formal employment overlaps with ethnic exclusion of

the Roma minority.

232

Wallace and Latcheva, “Economic Transformation.” 233

M. Kurzina, Zaščita prav rabotnikov v uslovijach rasprostranenija zaëmnogo truda : perspektivy dlja

Ukrainy (Kiev: Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung, 2011). 234

Varga, “Political Involvement.” 235

M. Kahancová and M. Martisková. Bargaining for Social Rights: Reducing Precariousness and Labor

Market Segmentation through Collective Bargaining and Social Dialogue (Bratislava: Central European Labor

Studies Institute, 2011). 236

C. Ciutacu, “Government and Trade Unions Clash on New Labor Code,” http://eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/

2011/02/articles/ro1102049i.htm.

69

In Ukraine, a wave of interesting initiatives is taking shape at the periphery of the established

labor movements. Several new trade unions have emerged among precarious workers, and given

their small size and therefore lack of political influence they focus on a set of actions very

different from those undertaken by the big unions. Unions of supermarket workers (Auchan,

METRO Cash & Carry), construction workers and self-employed market and street vendors

make use of pickets to pressure public prosecutors to initiate investigations into labor law

violations. The goal is to make authorities intervene in such cases, and so far these actions have

been most successful in cases of extreme violations, such as no-contract work coupled with

physical intimidation, particularly in the construction industry. This type of action is still at a

beginning, and undertaken by very small organizations with limited resources. Such actions are

often met with violent and illegal employer counteraction, and intimidation of participating

workers; it is therefore understandable that unionization is not the best measure of success. These

unions therefore attempt to counteract their isolation by cultivating international links. The

Zakhyst Pratsi (Defence of Work) trade union, responsible for the supermarket actions, is one of

two Ukrainian affiliates of the UNI Global Union. International affiliations offer a key source of

best practices and a communication channel; in exchange, these unions tend to be very active in

solidarity campaigns with workers in other countries, a rare feature in Eastern Europe.

Conclusions

This section has examined trade unions and their responses to the challenge of precarious

work and workers in Europe. A number of interesting themes emerge, some already identified

but others which have received less attention.

First, there is important variation in the situation of workers on different types of precarious

contracts within and between countries, and this has affected the trade union response. Overall,

part-time work can no longer be considered inherently precarious in Western Europe, even

though wages and other terms and conditions still tend to be inferior. Temporary work, including

TAW, has become more regulated in several countries, such as Belgium and France, but it

remains highly precarious overall. Temporary workers are usually formally separated from

others at the same workplace, creating an obstacle that is difficult for unions to overcome.

Temporary workers are also much less likely to be union members than those on open-ended

contracts, and their organization and representation in collective bargaining remain difficult.

Some unions have begun to organize dependent self-employed workers, for example Austria and

The Netherlands, but this area remains largely uncovered by regulation and is outside the scope

of most trade union activity. Finally, union attempts to organize posted and undocumented

workers remain marginal, although there have been some campaigns around this in the UK and

France.

One major difficulty is the important variation in the situation of workers on different types

of precarious contracts within and between countries which has affected the trade union

response. Overall, part-time work can no longer be considered inherently precarious in Western

Europe, even though wages and other terms and conditions still tend to be inferior. Temporary

work, including TAW, has become more regulated in several countries, such as Belgium and

France, but it remains highly precarious overall. Temporary workers are usually formally

separated from others at the same workplace, creating an obstacle that is difficult for unions to

overcome. Temporary workers are also much less likely to be union members than those on

open-ended contracts, and their organization and representation in collective bargaining remain

70

difficult. Some unions have begun to organize dependent self-employed workers, for example

Austria and The Netherlands, but this area remains largely uncovered by regulation and is

outside the scope of most trade union activity. Finally, union attempts to organize posted and

undocumented workers remain marginal, although there have been some campaigns around this

in the UK and France.

Closely related to this point, our research has confirmed the differential effect of atypical

work on specific categories of workers; this too has affected union response. In all countries,

women and young people are more likely to seek or accept part-time work. Temporary or fixed-

term work is now in almost all countries the first work available to young entrants to the labor

market, but in many countries is no longer leading to permanent work. At the same time, many

older workers are being forced into part-time, dependent self-employed, fixed-term or temporary

work as a result of compulsory redundancies or plant closures. While many unions have stepped

up their efforts to organize and recruit young workers, for example in Denmark and Sweden,

there appears to be less attention to the plight of older workers. Ethnic minority workers are also

over-represented in temporary and TAW work, and comprise the vast majority of undocumented

and informal workers. Unions in several countries are seeking to organize and represent these

workers, especially in the Netherlands, the UK, France and Romania.

Another important issue is the typology of union responses. Our study largely confirms

Heery’s characterisation of these as ‘resist, control, and include’, or Cerviño’s237

of exclusion,

partial inclusion and total inclusion, and identifies an historical sequencing to this response.

Generally, unions in most of the countries studied have responded more rapidly and effectively

to the needs of part-time workers than to those of temporary and other forms of atypical work.

This is partly explained by the greater difficulties in organizing other types of atypical workers,

who often have different employers, a formally different status and often different terms and

conditions. Unions have also responded in a more timely manner to the specific interests and

concerns of women workers than to those of ethnic minority, young or older workers, but many

are now devoting considerable resources to the latter groups.

A theme which has received less attention is the importance of union structure as a hindrance

to efforts to organize and represent atypical workers. In the west, this problem has arisen most

often in the most complex and highly structured trade union movements, affecting both those

with multiple ideologically-based confederations (France, Italy) and those with different

confederations based on occupation or profession (Denmark, Sweden). In CEE, the decentralized

structure of post-communist unions (Ukraine is an extreme example) is a universal obstacle.

Confederations that have sought to organize TAW or other atypical workers in new unions, such

as FNV or CGIL, have sometimes been more successful than those that have sought to adapt

existing sectoral federations to serve the needs of these workers (CGT). Many unions have

realized that their structures will have to change to adapt to the needs of new forms of work and

changing demarcations between professions and industries; this has proved a source of

controversy in Italy and France, and we can expect this same in other countries as well.

Finally, despite protestations otherwise from both unionists and scholars, it is clear that to

some degree there is a conflict of interest between atypical workers and others with long-term

secure jobs. It has always been the task of the trade union movement to articulate and defend the

interests of different groups of workers and to build unity and solidarity; this task has never been

more urgent than today.

237

Cerviño, Trade Union Strategies Towards Atypical Workers. See page 7 for full citation.

71

SUMMARY AND OVERALL CONCLUSIONS

We begin our overall conclusions with a set of observations about informal work generally.

First and most significant, the regional data make clear that the line of demarcation between

formal and informal employment is blurring and that this trend is likely to continue in the

foreseeable future and may in fact reflect a permanent shift in the nature of work of the same

magnitude as the shift from agrarian to industrial economies in the late nineteenth and twentieth

centuries.

Second the data also make clear that in most countries the national legal frameworks

governing employment and labor relations are geared to formal employment and standard jobs,

leaving a growing number of types of work and workers excluded from the basic protections of

the law. One important legal standard that should receive further attention is Canada’s Status of

the Artist Act which recognized the lack of a defined employer for artists and creates options for

collective representation.

Third it is evident that informalization has a disproportionate impact on women. In all

regions, a majority of the precarious and informal sectors are populated by women. This

“gendered” aspect of the informal economy has other major ramifications for virtually all other

significant institutions in the societies such as families and communities.

Fourth the data underscore the strong correlation between globalization and migration and

immigration and the as people relocate, voluntarily or forcibly, in search of survival.

In the face of these enormous challenges the data also make clear that freedom of association

and trade unionism remain perhaps the most effective means for informal economy workers to

improve their situations. It is also clear that trade unions are beginning to respond and that union

strategies and actions can make a significant impact in virtually all countries.

At the same time the data also reveal the real difficulties that existing unions face in adapting

their approaches and structures to include atypical and informal economy workers. In the

introduction, we argue that the dynamics driving informalization of work are the same

throughout the globe but with somewhat differing consequences for developed and developing

economies and for labor markets at different stages of development. Interestingly, organized

labor movements throughout the world – no matter their particular history or density – have

faced similar struggles in expanding the scope of their membership or constituencies and altering

both their structures and representational strategies to accommodate the needs of informal

workers. In fact, the stages of development in union approaches emerging from Europe – either

Heery’s ‘resist, control, and include’, or Cerviño’s “exclusion, partial inclusion and total

inclusion – can probably be applied throughout the globe. We elaborate on questions of self-

definition, structure, and representational strategies below.

The Labor Movement’s Self-definition.

Throughout the world, unions have typically defined their membership as employees

working for a particular employer or set of employers within an industry, or what can be called a

“wage culture”. The distancing of the employment relationship at the heart of the informalized

employment relationship has called into question this very fundamental aspect of organized

labor’s self-definition. The first position taken by most unions in regard to informalization was

to oppose it; opposition meant that the unions could not recognize the legitimacy of informal

workers themselves and embrace them as members or constituents. The research discussed in

this report indicates that many unions have moved past this position to embrace informal workers

72

as constituents and members or potential members, though often still with the goal of

formalizing their work and establishing traditional employment and collective bargaining

relationships.

It appears that there are two overarching reasons that motivate unions to make this

change. One is ideological: does the union or federation define itself as a representative of the

broader working class (as some have described a social movement of workers)? If so, the

inclusion of the working poor or workers of all kinds, irrespective of the nature of their

employment relationships, becomes easier. Where unions view themselves more narrowly as

representatives of workers in the formal sector of their occupational or industrial jurisdictions,

including atypical or informal economy workers becomes more difficult. At the same time,

however, many unions have made more pragmatic determinations that informal workers are part

of the occupation or sector that they have traditionally represented and have determined that if

they seek to maintain or increase their membership, they must find ways to represent those

workers without undue consideration of the nature of their employment relationships.

Structural issues.

Throughout the regions of the globe, it is clear that much of the organizing of and

advocacy by or for informal workers is being done through NGOs or MBOPs independent of

traditional trade unions. Thus, one of the central questions for trade unions is how best to relate

to these independent organizations. In some cases, unions and NGOs/MBOPs have loose

affiliations where they cooperate around policy issues or social dialogue at various governmental

levels or even around particular local campaigns. In others, NGOs/MBOPs have actually

affiliated with national unions or union federations and some have actually been subsumed under

the union. These relationships are fraught with potential conflicts over organizational culture,

governance issues and control. While the dominate pattern of union organization of informal

workers involves some form of prior independent organizing, there are, at the same time, many

examples of traditional unions choosing to organize and incorporate informal workers on their

own and without prior independent organization of any kind.

The regional reports also address the differing approaches to informalization by different

levels of the labor movement: international labor organizations especially the sectoral Global

Union Federations (GUFs), national central labor federations, and national unions (organized by

ideology, industry or occupation). In some countries, the national federations have played a

stronger role in organizing informal workers. Federations are also, and logically more likely, to

affiliate and otherwise provide assistance to independent organizations of informal workers.

Given that many informal workers work in sectors without an obvious union with jurisdiction,

the federations have an important role to play. At the same time, existing national unions are

more interested in actual membership and therefore struggle more with how to relate to the

independent organizations. The regional reports also make clear that, with the possible exception

of Western Europe, labor movements throughout the world are struggling with their own

survival. With membership and therefore resources shrinking, and in some parts of the world

unions confronting repression and even violence, attending to this new, difficult to find and often

very poor constituency, presents particular challenges. In this regard, assistance from wealthier

labor movements in the Global North has sometimes played an important role in allowing unions

in the Global South to organize informal workers.

73

Representational Strategies.

Perhaps the most important observations concern the diverse strategies needed to

effectively improve the conditions of informal workers. For most of the past century the

traditional labor movement globally has focused on workplace organizing and representing

workers through collective bargaining with an employer or group of employers, often at the

sectoral level, and through participation in the political system either through alliance with a

political party, through the institutions of social dialogue or other means. Thus, for many

unions, the main emphasis of their work has been to structure traditional collective bargaining

relationships for informal workers when possible, often through inclusion of informal workers

into the legal framework that structures the collective bargaining regime in a particular country

and by organizing an employing entity with which to bargain. For other informal workers, taxi

drivers and street vendors, for instance, collective bargaining may take place with the

municipality which essentially regulates their conditions of work, rather than with an employer

per se.

Another important strategy for almost all types of informal workers is gaining access to

various types of social protections including employment law (anti-discrimination, minimum

wage, occupational safety and health) and social insurance (unemployment insurance, workers

compensation, public pension systems, and socialized health care). Our report describes many

successes in this regard.

Both the expansion of collective bargaining rights and of other social protections

indicates the essential role of law in improving the status of informal workers. Differences in

legal regimes are an important source of differences in union strategies but in all cases, changing

the legal framework requires union imagination, time and resources.

Beyond the more traditional strategies of collective bargaining and the extension of social

protections through legal reform, many informal workers need approaches that address their

needs as very small scale entrepreneurs. This aspect of representation of informal workers pulls

most traditional unions to move beyond their comfort zone. In some cases, this has taken the

form of establishing cooperatives of small scale producers or other informal business enterprises.

Cooperatives hark back to an earlier definition of the labor movement, one that is still reflected

in the institutions of social democracy in many northern European countries, and that includes

trade unions, labor political parties and cooperatives. Beyond cooperatives, unions have assisted

street vendors, small scale producers, waste pickers and other similarly placed informal workers

with business infrastructure including insurance, access to capital, and business skills.

The last point about the need for education in business skills points toward a final aspect

of the work unions are doing with informal workers. The regional reports indicate the important

role played in many cases by education and skill building. This goes considerably beyond

narrow labor relations or union education to business skills for the self-employed, as mentioned

above, but also language skills for immigrant, and many other vocational skills.

74

Variation

While the conclusion thus far has emphasized aspects that are common across the reports,

this is not in any way intended to deny the very real variation among and within regions and

countries. These variations result from the role of the state and law, but also the role of

employers and the nature and strength of the labor movement and by the size and importance of

both the informal economy overall but also particular subsectors within the informal economy.

In particular, and not surprisingly, there are substantial differences between the countries of the

global north and south reflecting the much smaller size and importance of the informal economy

in the north; it appears, for instance, that unions in the global south are more willing to provide

assistance to and affiliated organizations of the self-employed without necessarily attempting to

turn them into employees. In Africa, Asia and Latin America there are many more example of

new forms of organization that blend the characteristics of membership-based organizations with

trade unions than we find in NorthAmerica and Europe. The dynamic features of these newer

forms of worker organizations have much to teach more traditional unions but at the same time,

the traditional unions experience with market economies and multinational employers has much

to offer these newer forms.

Looking Ahead: Suggestions for Future Research

The existing published literature on trade unions and informal economy workers, while

growing, is still very sparse. In particular, with the exception of some of the very detailed case

studies from which we drew much of our information, the research remains very descriptive but

often does not provide the kind of details on the actual processes of organizing that practitioners

need in order to help them improve their ability to engage in efforts to organize and represent

informal economy workers. Much of the experience with organizing and representing informal

economy workers is contained in unpublished reports and manuscripts as well as in the heads of

practitioners. Especially lacking are analyses of the internal dynamics of decision-making within

unions that leads to the commitment to organize these workers. This is no doubt because unions

do not often permit researchers to study these internal processes due to sensitive internal politics.

However, it is crucial that the details of factors that seem to contribute to success or failure in

various contexts become available to those in the practitioner community – in unions and in

other types of organizations – who undertake the important work of assisting informal economy

workers to have their occupations recognized as an important part of the global economy and

entitled to inclusion in the employment and labor relations legal frameworks of their countries.

To that end, a strong collaboration between researchers and practitioners could play a vital role

in knowledge development and transfer on this important issue.

75

Appendix 1.

Trade Unions and the Informal Economy, Latin American region, summary of unionised

workers in each country238

:

Argentina

TU Name

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group

Affiliation Achievements

Unión de

Personal de

Casas

Particulares

(UPACP)

Domestic

workers

Women

Union de

Trabajadores

Cartoneros

Argentinos

(UTRACA)

Waste pickers Women

and men

To build

consciousness

about workers’

rights

Sindicato de

Vendedores

Ambulantes de

la Republica

Argentina

(SIVARA)

street,

agricultural,

waste,

manufacturing,

domestic

Women

and men

StreetNet CGTRA

(Confederación

General de

Trabajadores de la

R. Argentina)

Implement the

contents of

Resolution 198,

2006

Bolivia Union(s) involved

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group


Union Femenina

de Floristas de

Bolivia

vendors-

street,florists

only

Women Federacion de

Mercados,

Sindicatos 26 de

Mayo y 26 de

Marzo

Works to improve

the florist's market.

Federacion

Nacional de

Trabajadoras del

Hogar de Bolivia

(FENATRAHOB)

Domestic

workers

Women CCTH-support org,

Confederation

Latinoamericana y

del Caribe de

Trabajadoras del

Hogar -

CONLACTRAHO-

A, CUT, CGTP

Secured a new law

regulating working

conditions for

domestic workers,

including social

security, breaks for

breastfeeding,

health coverage,

vacation time and

238

Source: WIEGO database and ILO

76

an 8 hour working

day. It has created a

support

organisation

(CCTH) which acts

as a lobbying and

vocational training

centre.

Education/Training:

Vocational training

provided through

support

organisation-

CCTH

Federacion

Departamental de

Gremiales de La

Paz

vendors-

street, kiosk

venders

defends members'

stalls, their kiosks

and their rights

Brazil

Union(s)

Involved

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group


Sindicato dos

Permissarios

de Sao Paulo

(SINPESP)

Vendors-

street (with

permits)

Sindicato dos

Trabalhadores

na Economia

Informal de

Sao Paulo

(SINTEIN)

vendors-

street,

home ( e.g.

sweets,

lottery

tickets,

cosmetics),

domestic

workers,

self

employed

teachers,

electricians,

plumbers,

salon

workers

Street Net CUT Proposes the creation of

an economic forum

consisting of

government, business,

vendors, city council,

police, dept of

environment, financial

and loan institutions.

Working towards the

harmonziation of shop

keepers, vendors and the

public Organisations of

vendors , unions should

also come together to

debate issues of public

space, preservation of

environment etc.

Education/Training:

Will provide skills

training, adult education,

catering courses, drama

and performance courses

and others.

Sindicato das Domestic

77

Trabalhadoras

Domésticas do

AracajuSergipe

(CUT)

workers

Sindicato de

Trabajadoras

Domésticas de

Rio de Janeiro

(CUT)

Domestic

workers

FENATRAD

Federação

Nacional das

Trabalhadoras

Domésticas

(FENATRAD)

Domestic

workers

Women CONLACTRAHO

Chile

Union(s)

Involved

Workers Demographics Non-union

NGO or

group


Sindicato

InterEmpresa

de

Trabajadores

Textiles de la

Confeccion

Vendors Women and

men

Sindicato

Interempresas

de

Trabajadores

de Casas

Particulares

(SINTRACAP)

Domestic

workers

Women

Sindicato de

Trabajadores

Vendedores de

la

Locomoción

Colectiva,

SINTRALOC

Ice cream,

cell-phone

cards,

handicrafts.

Book,

vendors in

public

transport

Women and

men

Permit to work in

public transport like

trains, buses, micros

78

Colombia

Union(s) Involved Workers Demographics Non-

Union

NGO

or

group


Casa de la Mujer

Trabajadora

(CUT)

vendors,

producers,services

and other IE

women workers

Women CUT Support,

organisation and

advice for

women workers

Confederacion de

Trabajadores de

Colombia (CTC)

vendors, other IE

workers

Women and

men

ITUC

Confederacion

General de

Trabajadores

Democraticos

(CGT)

vendors- street

and other

informal workers

Women and

men

FENALTRAL

CLAT - WCL

Organising

formal and

informal

workers to end

child labour

Unión de

Trabajadoras del

Hogar

Remuneradas

(Utrahogar)

Domestic workers Women CGT

Sindicato de

trabajadores de la

informalidad y el

servicio domestico

Domestic

workers, vendors,

services

Women CUT

SINCONTAXCAR Transport,

independent taxi

drivers

Women and

men

CNT Bolivar,

ITF

Negotiates taxi

tarrifs,

regulation of

yellow zones.

Gives advice to

stations.

Federacion

Nacional de

Trabajadores del

Comercio

(FENALTRAC-

CGT)

vendors - street

mobile and

stationary

Women and

men

CGT Work for

agreement

contracts with

organisations in

markets and

recreation

spaces.

Unión General de

Trabajadores

Independientes y

de la Economía

Informal, UGT

Vendord Women and

men

CUT Participation in

the Bogota

Public Space

Master Plan,

and the re-

design of some

zones in the

capital.

Capacity

building and

education

79

Costa Rica

Union(s)

involved

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group


Migrant

Domestic

Workers

Women Asociación

de

Trabajadoras

Domésticas

(Astradomes)

CTRN

CONLAC

TRAHO

Legislation for DW in 2009.

8 hour day and 1 day rest

per week.

Federacion

Costarricense

de

Trabajadores

Autonomos

(FECOTRA)

– a mix of

unions and

worker

associatins

Migrant

workers,

fishermen,

photographers,

private and

public drivers,

lottery and

nrewspaper

vendors.

artisans

Women

and men

CMTC

FETRAL-

COS

Agreement with the social

security office to get

general, maternity, and

people with disabilities

medical attention. Creché.

Housing. Capacity building

projects. Lobby in the

Round Table for Social

Dialogue and Employment

Policies.

Dominican Republic

Union(s)

involved

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group


Movimiento

de Mujeres

Unidas

(MODEMU)

Sex

workers

Women

and men

Redtrasex demands fixed wages, punctual

payment of wages, easter

bonus, one free day per week,

registration with social security,

pre- and post maternal leave,

and two weeks' paid annual

vacation. Legislation pending

on social security.

El Salvador

Union(s)

involved

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group

Affiliatio

n

Achievements

Federación de

Sindicatos de

la Industria de

la

Construcción

Similares

Transportes y

constructi

on

workers,

transport

workers

Women

and men

80

Otras

Actividades

Guatemala

Union(s) Involved Workers Demog

raphics

Non-

union

NGO or

group


Asociación de

Trabajadoras del Hogar

a Domicillio y Maquila

(Astradahom)

Domestic workers Women

Confederacion de

Unidad Sindical de

Guatemala (CUSG)

Agricultural

Workers

CIOSL/

ORIT CTCA

CGTG

Central General de

Trabajadores de

Guatemala (CGTG)

IE Workers CLAT CMT Struggle for

social end

economic

rights for

young people.

Campaign

“decent jobs:

now”

Unidad Sindical de

Trabajadores de

Guatemala

(UNSITRAGUA)

IE Workers CONCENTR

A

Sindicato de

Trabajadores de la

Direccion General de

Transportes

(SITRADGTMICIVI)

Taxi drivers.

Transport.

Women

and men

ITF Education,

training on TU,

negotiation for

formal workers

Sindicato de

trabajadoras

domesticas, similares a

cuenta propia

(Sintradomsa)

Domestic workers Women

Federacion Sindical de

Trabajadores

Independientes

Vendors Women

and

Men

Central

General de

Trabajadores

de Guatemala

(CGTG)

Designation of

public spaces

for street

vendors with

the municipality

Sindicato de

Trabajadores y

Trabajadoras

Independientes de

Guatemala

Vendors Women

and men

Frente

Nacional de

Lucha (FNL)

To protect,

organise and to

promote

capacity

building

projects

Sindicato Nacional de

Trabajadores

Health agents, mid-

wives, nurses,

Women

and men

FNL Diploma for

professional

81

Independientes de la

Salud (Sintrainsa)

cosmetic sales men

and women, natural

product salers

Mid-wives from

the Ministry of

Health

Honduras

Un ion(s)

Involved

Workers Demogra

phics

Non-

union

NGO

or

group


Federacion de

Org de

Trabajadores

del Sector

Social e

Informal de la

Economia de

Honduras(FOT

SSIEH)

Street

vendors and

other IE

workers

Street

Net

CUTH Working on special law for

the sector, building of

markets, making a rotating

fund and promoting a social

protection plan

Federación

Nacional

de Trabajador

es Autónomos

de la Economía

de Honduras

(FENTAEH)

Street

vendors and

other IE

workers**

CGT Promotes the struggle to

introduce the Labour

Organisation Law for

Autonmous Workers (on

going)

Mexico

Union(s)

Involved

Workers

Demographics Non-union

NGO or

group


Confederacion

Revolucionari

a de Obreros y

Campesinos

(CROC)

vendors- street,

market, cab

drivers,photogr

aphers,

cleaners - own

account

workers

Women and men StreetNet Has education and

training programmes

to build organisation-

practical and political

Female Union

of Domestic

Servants and

Related

Workers

Domestic

workers

women

Female Union

of Domestic

Workers of

Vera Cruz

Domestic

workers

Women

82

Federacion

Nacional de

Organizacione

s de

Trabajadores

no Asalariados

(FNOTNA)

vendors -street

and

market,shoe

and car clean,

homeworkers,

artisans

Women and men Street Net CROC Negotiate with

authorities at state

and federal level for

rights and social

protection. Has

negotiated an

agreement on urban

usage and on access

to social security in

State of Nuevo Leon.

Workers pay small

contribution

Education/Training:

Provides political and

organisation building

education and

training

Nicaragua

Union(s)

involved

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group


Confederación

de

Trabajadores

Por Cuenta

Propia

(CTCP)

vendors-

street,market,hawkers,

coops and

associations of

informal workers

Women

and men

Street Net Frente

Nacional de

os

Trabajadores

(FNT),

Negotiations with

local governments,

national police,

national commission

for the eradication of

child labour

(CENEPTI)

Confederación

de Unificación

Sindical

Vendors Women

and men

Panamá

Union(s)

involved

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group


Sindicato de

Trabajadoras

de la

Provincia de

Cloque,

Panama

vendors,

craft

producers

Women Convergencia

Sindical

provides services to promote

crafts and trade union training, as

well as medical support services.

It is currently involved in

developing a micro-credit

program

83

Perú

Union(s) Involved

Workers Demographics Non-union

NGO or

group

Affiliation

Achievements

Central Unitaria

de Trabajadores

del Peru (CUT)

vendors-

street, micro-

entrepreneurs

in

production,

service,

commerce,

agriculture,

domestic

workers

Women and

men

ORIT-ICFTU CUT represents

its members in

different

forums and

negotiations on

employment

and

development.

Sindicato Nacional

de Trabajadores

del Hogar,

SINTRAHOGARP

Domestic

workers

Women

Red de Mujeres

Trabajadoras

Ambulantes de

Mercados de

Lima, Network of

Working Women

Vendors from the

Markets of Lima

street

vendors,

home-based

workers,

waste pickers

Women COMFIA - CUT Created a

network of

Women Street

Vendors in

Lima

Instituto de

Promoción y

Formación de Trabajadoras del

Hogar

(IPROFOTH)

Domestic

workers

Women Peru

Network

CGTP

CONLACTRAHO

First national

union of

domestic

workers. Assist

organising,

trains, runs

projects.

Struggles for

changes to

labour laws,

and was

successful in

change of law -

domestic

workers now

covered by

labour law

(2003)

84

Uruguay

Union(s)

involved

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group


Central Unica

de

Trabajadores

(PIT)

vendors

and other

IE

workers

Women

and men

Sindicato

Unico de

Trabajadoras

Domésticas

(SUDT)

Domestic

workers

Women

Unión de

Clasificadores

de Residuos

Sólidos,

UCRUS

Waste

collectors

Women

and men

PIT- CNT

Red

Latinoamericana

de Recicladores

Work with the municipalities,

ask to be recognised as an

important

cleaning/environmental agent.

Venezuela

Union(s) involved

Workers Demo-

graphics

Non-union

NGO or

group


Federacion Unica

de Trabajadores

No Dependientes y

Afines de

Venezuela

(FUTRAND)

Vendors

street,

market,

hawkers

Women

and men

Street Net Proposers of new labour law to

cover own account workers -

particularly vendors. Demands to

municipalities to creates a post

which will oversee the running,

promotion and organisation of

markets; to ennd discrimination

against market and street traders;

Creation of new markets and

commercial centres; Create an

ordinance which will create a

forum for discussion of city

policy with market and street

traders and other informal

economy workers dependent on

public spaces to earn a living;

Establishment of an office to

regulate the informal economy

and its needs.